Telus Canada’s fastest mobile network for second year in a row, says report

Vancouver-based national carrier Telus has once again secured the PCMag crown for fastest mobile network in Canada.

According to PCMag’s September 17th, 2018 report, Telus averaged download speeds of 174.67Mbps across the country, and was able to achieve maximum download speeds of 742.26Mbps in select regions.

Montreal-based national carrier Bell came in second place, with average download speeds of 159.42Mbps and maximum download speeds of 780.1Mbps.

Toronto-based national carrier Rogers came handily in third place, with average download speeds of 104.37Mbps and maximum download speeds of 355.98Mbps.

In terms of average upload speeds, Telus came in first with speeds of 31.48Mbps, Bell came in second with 30.68Mbps and Rogers came in third with 27.63Mbps.

Bell won the maximum upload speed competition, with speeds of 67.38Mbps. Rogers came in second, with 66.80Mbps and Telus came in third with 66.53Mbps.

Interestingly enough, PCMag reported that each carrier provided subscribers with an average 99 percent time on LTE.

This means that subscribers should be able to remain connected to the Rogers, Bell and Telus LTE networks 99 percent of the time.

PCMag crowns Kingston “North America’s Fastest City”

PCMag‘s report further broke down Canada’s wireless ecosystem by region, revealing that the city of Kingston, Ontario not only has the fastest wireless speeds in Canada, but it also provides subscribers with the fastest wireless speeds in North America.

Thanks largely in part to Bell’s testing of a new 4G LTE system in the city, PCMag reported that the carrier was able to achieve speeds of 1.2Gbps.

A phone carrying a Bell SIM was able to achieve peak download speeds of 780Mbps.

Across Canada’s Big Three carriers, PCMag saw average download speeds of 292Mbps.

It’s worth noting that PCMag reported that the tri-city area comprised of Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge is North America’s second-fastest city, with average download speeds of 193Mbps.

Regional carriers defeated by national incumbents

While it’s no surprise that Canada’s three-largest carriers were able to take the top spots in PCMag‘s national rankings, it’s worth noting that some of Canada’s regional players are still competitors in the wireless market.

Of course, at least one member of Canada’s Big Three was able to beat out every single regional carrier in every city where PCMag conducted its testing, but in places like Saskatchewan — home to Crown carrier SaskTel — the competition was quite close.

SaskTel didn’t take the stop spot in any Saskatchewan city where PCMag conducted its testing, but in places like Swift Current, the Crown carrier was able to beat out both Rogers and Telus while losing to Bell.

In cities like Saskatoon, SaskTel once again came in fourth place, but was able to achieve download speeds within 10Mbps of the closest Big Three carrier. SaskTel came in fourth, with average download speeds of 60.41Mbps, while Bell came in third with average download speeds of 65.34Mbps.

Granted, Telus in Saskatoon achieved average download speeds of 75.25Mbps and Rogers handily came in first with 117.92Mbps.

Other regional players weren’t as competitive as SaskTel, however.

In Montreal — home to Canada’s second-largest carrier by subscriber share Bell — Videotron was summarily defeated by all of Canada’s national incumbents.

Videotron eked out average download speeds of 52.00Mbps, while Telus achieved 187.62Mbps, Bell achieved 148.50Mbps and Rogers achieved 119.80Mbps.

Videotron was also trounced in Quebec City, but the regional carrier was able to prove somewhat worthy competition in places like Sherbrooke and Drummondville. In fact, PCMag reported that Videotron had the third-fastest network in Drummondville, in terms of average download speeds.

Videotron achieved average download speeds of 60.13Mbps, compared to Telus’s first-place 73.26Mbps and Rogers’s third-place 66.07Mbps.

Source: PCMag

Correction 27/09/18 2:10pm ET: PCMag originally reported that a Telus SIM connected to the Bell network was able to achieve speeds of 780Mbps. This was incorrect, and PCMag has since amended their story with the correction.

As such, MobileSyrup‘s story has been updated to reflect the correction.