Study reveals winners and losers in Canadian mobile telecoms
Victoria, British Columbia.: A study of Canadian mobile telephone usage has revealed that users on the Bell network are getting the best overall download speeds across Canada, based on typical usage, followed by Telus. The study, published by Tutela, the crowdsourced mobile data company, analysed over 2.8 billion measurements across the country, including over 213,000 mobile network speed tests, between February and April.
Tutela tests mobile networks in a way that represents the day-to-day usage and experience of real-world mobile users. The methodology and configuration simulate typical user mobile behaviour, such as accessing websites or downloading and sending images, rather than the more traditional testing of mobile network speeds, which have been based upon maximum potential speeds for mobile networks under optimum test conditions.
In addition to the download speed results, which alone do not tell the full story, Freedom Mobile, Bell and Telus performed very well in latency test results, indicating highly responsive networks.
The report, which is available to download for free from Tutela’s website, also reveals some differences in network performance across the provinces. Although Bell delivered the highest average across the country, regional analysis shows differences across the provinces with Rogers delivering the highest 4G speeds in both British Columbia and Alberta.
Tom Luke, Vice President, Tutela, said: “The points we have highlighted really are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the insight available in the data. Tutela’s method of data collection offers the most comprehensive picture of mobile network performance in Canada, even drilling right down to specific street addresses and locations.”
“There is a lot of interest in the industry and among consumers about mobile speeds, with operators wanting to claim to be the fastest, however the focus is often on the “peak speed” results taken under optimum test conditions, something very few end-users experience in the real-world.”
“Our results are based upon the network performance users experience on a day-to-day basis, when carrying out typical activities. With this in mind, our results show Bell, followed by Telus providing the fastest download speeds across 3G and 4G networks.”
Tutela does not collect any personal data and all results shown in Tutela’s reports are aggregated. This protects the device owner’s privacy, and ensures compliance with international data protection and privacy laws.