Fiber connectivity expands across Canada with TELUS and Bell offering faster median download and upload speeds with their fiber offerings, both at the provincial level and major cities.
As per Ookla’s Q4 2021 Speedtest Intelligence data, TELUS and Bell have offered faster median speeds than all other fixed broadband providers combined.
Bell fiber
With wider coverage, Bell fiber’s median download speed is over 3x faster than other fixed broadband in the Québec province as well as Montréal and Québec City. Major Canadian cities of Toronto, London, Halifax, and St. John’s also benefit from Bell’s improved download speed. While on the provincial side, Bell Fiber’s median download speed is faster than the market average in New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Prince Edward Island.
As a major differentiator for fiber, Bell also showed over 12x advantage over other fixed broadband for median upload speed in Prince Edward Island, followed by Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Ontario, Québec, and New Brunswick provinces. In the major cities, Halifax and Toronto benefit 11x faster upload speeds from Bell, followed by Montréal, London, and Québec City.
TELUS fiber
TELUS Fiber brought 7x and 5x faster upload speeds in the Alberta and British Columbian provinces, respectively. In the major cities, there is 6x higher upload speed in the city of Vancouver by using TELUS, followed by Edmonton and Calgary.
The same areas above also experience faster median download speeds from TELUS’ fiber service.
On a separate note, TELUS and Bell don’t provide any fiber service in the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Saskatchewan, and Yukon. Bearing in mind that infrastructure improvements like laying fiber are very expensive, fiber deployments are being limited to areas with high population density where providers are more likely to recoup costs. This hinders fiber broadband access to underserved areas, but obviously, in areas where fiber exists, the speed upgrade is noticeable.
