Hot off the heels of yesterday’s broadcast report, the Canada Radio-Television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has released its annual Communications Monitoring report for wireless and internet usage.
The report reveals some interesting figures about Canadians, beginning with the fact that 2016 saw three million more mobile broadband subscriptions than 2015 — representing a 13.3 percent increase.
Canadians are also consuming an average of 1.2GB of mobile data every month, which is a 25 percent increase from 2015.
Interestingly enough, the report also highlights that “more than a quarter of those who subscribed to a monthly data plan had at least 5GB of data,” which seems to suggest that more Canadians are able to afford more data every month.
It also seems that LTE and LTE-A adoption is on the rise. According to the report, 98.5 percent of Canadians have access to LTE, while 83 percent of Canadians have access to LTE-A.
Canadians wireless subscriptions have also exceeded landline subscriptions. The report states that 86.1 percent of households have wireless service, while 71.9 have a landline.
Additionally, 27 percent of households only have wireless service, while 13.2 percent of households only have a landline.
Canada’s wireless retail market generated $23.2 billion in revenue in 2016.
The majority of Canadians’ communication service spending — roughly 40 percent — goes to mobile wireless service.
Canadians are also consuming more internet
Canadians consumed roughly 128.3GB of data per month in 2016 — factoring both downloads and uploads — representing a 23.4 percent increase over 2015.
“Over the last five years, Canadians’ monthly data consumption increased by an average of 40 percent each year,” reads an excerpt from the CRTC’s November 9th, 2017 media release about the telecom report.
The report further reveals that Canadians are no longer willing to put up with slow internet. Roughly 26 percent of Canadians are currently subscribed to an internet plan that offers at least 50Mbps of download speed.
“Five years ago, only 3.6 percent of Canadians subscribed to this speed tier,” reads another excerpt. “By the end of 2016, 84 percent of Canadians had access to download speeds of at least 50Mbps and upload speeds of at least 10Mbps on fixed broadband internet services.”
The retail internet market also generated $10.2 billion worth of revenue in 2016.
It’s interesting to note that only 21 percent of Canadians’ communications service spending goes to internet services.
In total, the CRTC reports that Canada’s telecommunications revenues totaled $48.7 billion in 2016.
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