LONDON, UK – While all three of Canada's national mobile operators have cranked up their 4G speeds over the last six months, Telus still holds a commanding lead, says OpenSignal in its new semi-annual report Mobile Networks Update: Canada.
The wireless mapping coverage company examined close to 678 million measurements collected from 31,762 mobile test devices between April 1 and June 29, 2018 in its update on Canada scheduled to be officially released this week.
According to the report, average 4G download speeds in Canada rose by at least 5 Mbps for Bell, Rogers and Telus. Bell posted the biggest gains, with its 4G download speeds increasing 7 Mbps to 42.4 Mbps. Telus's average 4G download increased 6 Mbps, while Rogers' average score went up by 5 Mbps.
But Telus held onto the 4G download award with a blistering average connection speed of 51.1 Mbps, making it the first Canadian operator to pass the 50 Mbps threshold in OpenSignal’s national metrics. That's more than three times faster than the global average of 16.9 Mbps, putting Telus among the fastest operators in the world, adds the report.
While LTE reach in Canada continues to increase, its growth is incremental, continues the report.
“We tracked the biggest gain in our 4G availability metric on Bell, an increase of less than 2 percentage points, while Telus saw a smaller uptick. Those two operators tied for our 4G availability award as each was able to provide an LTE signal to our users just under 89% of the time.”
The report also tracked faster speeds than the national level in Toronto and Montreal. Both Bell and Telus averaged 4G download speeds faster than 60 Mbps, beating their national 4G download speed scores by more than 20 Mbps in Toronto and more than 13 Mbps in Montreal.
