Bell wins wireless speed race again

Canada’s largest telecommunications company can boast having the country’s fastest wireless network for the second year in a row, according to PCMag data released Wednesday.

BCE Inc.’ s Bell Mobility edged out its top competitors Telus Corp. and Rogers Communications Inc. to win top spot in PCMag’s fourth annual Fastest Mobile Networks Canada ranking.

While Canadians often complain about expensive cellphone bills — our wireless prices are among the highest in the world, according to data published by the federal telecom regulator this month — the technology publication’s study indicates we’re paying for high quality service.

“All three of Canada’s national carriers are faster and more reliable, on average, than their U.S. counterparts,” PCMag reported, based on tests on both sides of the border.

Bell clocked average nat i onal download speeds of almost 60 megabits per second. That’s twice as fast as Verizon Communications Inc., the fastest network in the U. S. Telus and Rogers also posted speeds that nearly doubled Verizon’s, with national average download speeds of 53 MBps and 43 MBps respectively.

PCMag called Bell’s network “truly a world-class 4G experience.” It credited Bell’s success to tri- band carrier aggregation and small cell technologies, along with its partnership with Telus to build shared infrastructure.

PCMag sent six drivers to 20 major cities to compare networks using the same software on the same devices at the same times over three weeks in July and August. It ranked providers based on a weighted average of download speeds, upload speeds, ping time and reliability. Its results fall largely in line with a crowdsourced study by Ookla’s speedtest. net, which also crowned Bell the fastest network.

But much like wireless data prices, wireless speeds vary greatly across the country. Price and quality are often lower where there is robust regional competition, and higher in larger cities in Ontario, Alberta and B.C., where there aren’t strong regional players.

For the fastest average download speeds ( consumers download more than upload, so these are more telling), head to Kitchener, Ont., where Bell posted a whopping 100 MBps. Montreal ranked middle of the pack ( Vidéotron’s network was f astest t here at 48 MBps) and Winnipeg was at the bottom ( Bell’s network was fastest there, at 32 MBps).

Vidéotron and Eastlink, both of which bought wireless spectrum in the 2008 auction and launched in 2010 and 2013 respectively, beat the Big Three in all or some cities in their regions. Vidéotron dominated in Quebec, where it was crowned fastest in all major cities, and was also fastest in Ottawa. Atlantic Canada provider Eastlink posted the fastest speeds in Halifax and Prince Edward Island.

Regional carriers SaskTel and Manitoba Telecom Services Inc.’s networks couldn’t beat the Big Three in the prairies, home to the country’s slowest wireless speeds and lowest prices.

But the slowest carrier of all proved to be upstart Wind Mobile. It posted average national download speeds of 3 megabits per second, approximately 20 times slower than Bell. Wind’s new owner, Shaw Communications Inc., has promised to upgrade its network to LTE from 3G over the next year. It has yet to reveal how this will affect its prices, currently among the cheapest in Canada.

“Wind has still managed to accumulate a million subscribers as of July, showing there’s an untapped market for less expensive wireless service,” PCMag states.