Okay, so I'm a little peeved lately with my mobile provider. Bell.
None of them are perfect, but recently it's been because they increased my plan by $5/month ... WITHOUT TELLING ME. Grumble...
It wasn't enough they kept increasing the out of country "roam better" plan by a buck then two bucks per day... oi.
Anywho ... they have recently been touted tho' as the fastest mobile network by Tutela when they compared the providers.
Here's what Tutela had to say about their research:
None of them are perfect, but recently it's been because they increased my plan by $5/month ... WITHOUT TELLING ME. Grumble...
It wasn't enough they kept increasing the out of country "roam better" plan by a buck then two bucks per day... oi.
Anywho ... they have recently been touted tho' as the fastest mobile network by Tutela when they compared the providers.
Here's what Tutela had to say about their research:
Bell provides fastest download speeds in Canada, ties with Telus for best quality network
Over 1.8 billion records from more than 1 million handsets over 6 months benchmark the network speeds and quality offered by operators across Canada
Victoria, BC. March 14, 2019: Mobile network quality across Canada is notably excellent, especially compared to the United States. This is according to a new report published by Tutela, an independent Canadian mobile quality measurement company. Only Manitoba failed to see consistent quality on any operator exceed 75%, while Saskatchewan and Quebec provided users with the best overall network experience – able to conduct HD video calls or stream 1080p video 87% of the time.
Key findings:
- Despite Bell’s clear advantage in download speeds (27 Mbps compared to 23 Mbps), Bell and Telus deliver virtually identical consistent quality to their customers. Meanwhile, across the whole country, Rogers' excellent consistent quality score was nine percentage points lower than the other two national operators. Overall, in one out of four tests, Rogers customers' network connection did not meet Tutela's threshold for excellent consistent quality, which may translate to an inferior experience with demanding use-cases like HD video streaming and real-time group video calling.
- On a state by state level, regional operators have a clear home-field advantage, Videotron wins in Quebec when it comes to providing a consistently excellent experience to subscribers. Meanwhile, while Sasktel falls slightly short of Rogers’ consistent quality score in Saskatchewan, it achieves an impressive 83% excellent consistent quality even given its focus on rural coverage.
- MVNO download speed caps significantly affect network quality levels on the lower cost networks (Lucky, Public and Chatr). While these networks perform fine for less demanding use cases, they fall short of being able to reliably allow users to make video calls or stream HD video on YouTube or Netflix.
Hunter Macdonald, Founder and CEO at Tutela, said: “As a BC-based company (with HQ in Victoria), we have always enjoyed a high-quality cellular network from the operators here - and from our new research, it's great to see that this extends across all of the other provinces too - albeit with the best performing operators varying in each case. Operators across the country have worked to upgrade 3G networks to LTE-Advanced technology, and now peak throughput speeds have increased to a point where they outstrip the maximum needed for most current use cases. At this time, operators need to refocus on ensuring that these maximum potential speeds are also matched with a reliable, consistent mobile experience. After all, what use is occasionally hitting gigabit download speeds if half the time you’re struggling to load a Google search result?”
Tutela uses crowdsourcing to test mobile networks in a way that represents the day-to-day usage and experience of real-world mobile users, directly from the users’ handsets. Tutela’s software runs in the background of over 3,000 diverse third-party mobile apps, which have partnered with Tutela to study network quality. This report used over 1.8 billion measurements, collected between August 1, 2018 and January 31, 2019. The full report is available here, and supporting images here.