As we like to do every year about this time, let's consult Canada's Internet Factbook (for 2019). Compiled by the registrar for the .CA domain, it’s brimming with stats about how the country uses the internet.
It reveals, for example, that the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) set a goal for 90 percent of Canadians to have broadband downloads of at least 50 Megabits per second (Mbps), plus a minimum 10Mbps up, by 2021. And while the country appears to be edging toward that target, it requires having an internet service provider with real oomph. Thus, we are here to once again reveal which ISPs fit that bill, no matter where you live in the Great White North.
WINNERS: The Fastest ISPs in Canada
The Fastest ISPs in Canada
This is how we differentiate a "major" ISP from all the rest of the broadband in Canada: it has to have at least 500,000 subscribers or more to be major, and typically reach across multiple provinces. That limits the pool of majors to the six names you see in the chart below.
In the past, this top spot has always been a battle between two big names, Rogers and Bell Canada; Rogers had the title for years and Bell Canada took it for the last couple. But 2020 is nothing if not a year of change, and the latest king of the speed hill in Canada is Telus.
The edge Telus has across all the tests performed on our PCMag Speed Test is only a few points higher than second-place Rogers and Bell Canada in third. (The number on each bar indicates the PCMag Speed Index, a weighted combination of the download and upload speed averages. Read the full Methodology for how we calculate this in The Fastest ISPs for 2020The Fastest ISPs for 2020.)
Every one of the major ISPs in Canada saw a nice speed increase from 2019 (click the tab at the top of the chart to compare). Telus saw the biggest boost, 51.5 points, which put it well ahead of the rest. Shaw actually had the second largest increase, but it wasn't enough to pull it out of fourth place again. The gap between those top four major ISPs is narrowed to only about 24 points, and things could be different next year.
As fast as Telus is on the national average, all those ISPs are hampered somewhat by having customers spread across several locations and tiers of service, making it difficult to keep averages high. That benefits a provider like Beanfield Metroconnect, which—as it’s name suggests—connects only buildings in one metro area (Toronto). We include it because Beanfield got at least 100 tests, which is the minimum number we require for inclusion in this story. And the throughput offered by this small localized provider is astronomical.
Other ISPs in the top 10 that are usually higher up include Bell Aliant, which snuck in last year as the winner under “All ISPs” with an excellent PCMag Speed Index of 134.8. But that number fell quite a bit for 2020 to 112.2, which dropped Bell Aliant to sixth place. Communicate Freely, a small locally owned fibre ISP in Port Perry, Ontario, made the list last year and stuck around this time with a nice speed increase to 107.4 from 91.7.
Canadian Provinces With the Fastest Internet
As usual, we did not get enough response from Yukon, Nunavut, and the Northwest Territories to include in our story, nor do we have enough data from Prince Edward Island. But the other nine provinces are here and ready to duke it out. The darker the red on the map, the faster the average speed in the province. (Click the tabs to compare other years; hover your cursor over a label to see the exact PCMag Speed Index for that location.)
Once again, Newfoundland and Labrador and New Brunswick are the fastest, thanks in part to very high-speed installs from Eastlink, Bell Canada, Bell Aliant, and Rogers. We've said it before and it's worth repeating: this level of competition in a small region is good for customers.
It's nice to see that all the provinces had a major speed increase from 2019 to 2020; last year, Quebec actually went down, but this time came close to doubling last year's 65.7 to a respectable 113.9. Newfoundland more than doubled its speed to an index of 321.3. Saskatchewan had a great showing, now coming in as the third fastest of the provinces this year, with an excellent 135.4 thanks to providers like Shaw and Bell Aliant.
If you're curious about the top ISPs in each province, here's a quick look (minus Newfoundland and Labrador, which didn't have enough individual tests per ISP to include any one brand).
- Alberta: Shaw—123.5 PSI
- British Columbia: Telus—155.1
- Manitoba: Shaw—136.5
- New Brunswick: Rogers—207.9
- Nova Scotia: Bell Canada—157.5
- Ontario: Beanfield Metroconnect—571.6 (For everyone outside downtown Toronto, Rogers is 136.9)
- Québec: Bell Canada—164.3
- Saskatchewan: Shaw—397.8
Canadian Cities With the Fastest Internet
Pegging the fastest cities year after year is truly hitting a moving target, but always a good indicator of the places trying hard to keep internet customers—that means everyone!—happy. A couple of years ago that was Quebec City; last year it was the neighboring town of Lévis, QC, which had a 413.1 PCMag Speed Index, the kind of average any city would love.
This year, Lévis did even better, upping that city-wide index to 435.3, a stunning number... that is completely overshadowed by a score of 493.3 from Chambly, QC, a suburb of Montreal. Bell Canada's network in that spot is one of the fastest our data has ever seen in Canada, with Bell customers getting a full index rating of 583.7 all to themselves.
//Like last year, this is a collection of small towns and suburbs benefiting from having ISPs throw fibre installations at them. Only one other top 10 entry besides Levis also was on top last year, which is East York, Ontario, part of Toronto, which jumped from a 155.2 to 283.0, thanks to Beanfield.
Methodology
To create this story we used results from 33,782 tests taken between June 1, 2019, and June 2, 2020, all using our PCMag Speed TestPCMag Speed Test.
Results are only shown for ISPs or locations (or ISPs in specific locations) that had at least 100 tests. We look at the average throughput up and down, recorded in kilobits per second, which we divide by 1,000 to get to Megabits per second, or Mbps.
We take 80 percent of the download speed, 20 percent of the upload speed, and add those numbers to generate a PCMag Speed Index (PSI). That number makes it easy to perform an at-a-glance determination of exactly which ISP is the fastest, as well as make quick comparisons to results from previous years. (For more, read the full methodology in Fastest ISPs of 2020: United States.)
If your ISP is missing from our results, run a PCMag Speed TestPCMag Speed Test today (click "GO" below.) We'll include your tests in future versions of the Fastest ISPs in Canada.