Ookla’s Q3 network performance report ranked British Columbia as the Canadian province with the fastest median mobile download speeds.
Now sitting at the number one spot with 69.48 Mbps, British Columbia jumped to first place from its third spot in the last quarter, dethroning Newfoundland and Labrador.
Alberta and Manitoba still occupied the second and third spots, which were measured to have similar network performance since last quarter, coming in at 68.9Mbps and 67.57Mbps respectively.
Interestingly, Newfoundland and Labrador fell from first place to seventh. Ookla measured a mobile median download speed of 47.60Mbps in Q3 2022, a far cry from last quarter when the province’s network produced 72.81Mbps.
With a bump to 64.8Mbps, Quebec came out just ahead of Ontario, which slid slightly this quarter to 60.90Mbps.
Of Ookla’s test areas, Northwest Territories still had the slowest mobile speeds measured, coming in at just 16.51Mbps.
Overall, Canada’s median mobile network speed advanced four spots to 21st place globally, clocking in at 70.73 Mbps.
All three major carriers showed solid download speeds. Telus and Bell vied for first place with a median speed of 76.03Mbps and 73.30Mbps respectively. Rogers trailed behind at 59.86Mbps.
Bell still had the fastest 5G speeds in Canada at 144.73 Mbps, edging out Telus, which had 136.29Mbps. Rogers was far behind in this regard, coming at 97.55Mbps. With that said, Rogers is the only carrier that heavily invested in low-band 5G, which is suited for distance and not bandwidth. Bell and Telus focus on 5G services on higher spectrum that deliver faster data speeds but have a shorter range.
To measure network consistency, Ookla measured the percentage of network test samples that was above a certain threshold. For its mobile reports, that threshold has been set at 5Mbps minimum download speeds, the recommended speed for streaming HD videos, according to the study.
Rogers ranked first in this category, although only with a 1.4 per cent difference compared to Bell. Telus is close behind with a speed of 77.8 per cent. All in all, the three carriers performed similarly.
