Network partners Telus and Bell tie for fastest median download speeds
VICTORIA — When it comes to the best mobile experience for customers in Canada, Telus ranks highest compared to Bell and Rogers, according to a new report from Tutela Technologies, a Canadian crowdsourced mobile network data company.
According to Tutela’s 2021 State of Mobile Experience report for Canada, Telus took the top spot for both excellent consistent quality (achieving a score of 88.4%) and core consistent quality (95.2%). For excellent consistent quality, Rogers and Bell achieved scores of 82.7% and 82%, respectively. For core consistent quality, Bell scored 92.9%, while Rogers achieved a score of 90.1%.
Excellent consistent quality is Tutela’s metric for measuring how often connections are good enough for demanding applications such as 1080p video streaming, HD group video calling and real-time mobile gaming. The core consistent quality metric represents how often consumers can access applications such as SD video streaming, social media sharing or web browsing.
To benchmark mobile experience over the last six months for its report, Tutela evaluated almost 900,000 speed and latency tests, conducted on the smartphones of real-world users of Canada’s three national mobile operators within common coverage areas, between September 1, 2020 and February 28, 2021. The company partners with various app owners and tests network quality via performance network code embedded in the apps. Running in the background, the company transfers small files (1-2 MB) to do its network testing.
In other categories covered by Tutela’s report, Bell and Telus tied for the fastest median download throughput in common coverage areas across Canada, delivering speeds of 42.4 Mbps and 42.2 Mbps on average, respectively. Rogers ranked third with a median download speed of 37.4 Mbps.
Telus and Bell also tied for the highest coverage score, with Telus achieving a 5G/4G coverage score of 667 (out of 1,000 points) and Bell achieving 655 points for the same metric. Rogers’ 5G/4G coverage score was 503 points out of 1,000, according to Tutela’s report. Factoring in 3G coverage, Telus, Bell and Rogers achieved total coverage scores of 698, 685 and 543, respectively.
Rogers was tops for median upload throughput in common coverage areas, with an average upload speed of 15.8 Mbps. Telus and Bell delivered median upload speeds of 15 Mbps and 14.8 Mbps, respectively.
In the final category, median one-way latency, Bell was the leader for the most responsive network with a median latency result of 17.1 milliseconds. Telus placed second at 17.8 ms, while Rogers was third at 19.1 ms.
For more information and to download a copy of the report, please click here.
