Bell claims fastest ISP in Canada for second year in a row, says PCMag

Bell Canada and its subsidiary, Bell Aliant, have claimed top spots for fastest internet service provider (ISP) in Canada again, according to PCMag.

The American publication regularly measures internet and mobile data speeds around the world, including Canada. This time around, however, PCMag split up its Canadian results as it does with other countries. There are two groups now: ‘major ISPs’ with over 500,000 subscribers, and ‘the rest’ that have fewer subscribers.

PCMag attributes Bell Canada’s success to its investment in fibre, which has allowed it to increase speeds significantly. While the ISP has more than 2 million subscribers, not all of them are on ‘Fibe,’ Bell’s fibre network. In other words, the speed increases from Fibe were enough to bring Bell to top place, despite being sixth in 2017.

Bell Aliant, however, falls into the ‘all ISPs’ category with just under 500,000 subscribers. Still, Aliant’s speed is quite fast, and it scored higher than Bell Canada on PCMag’s index.

In the major ISPs section, Rogers and Telus follow close behind in second and third respectively. According to PCMag, Rogers technically has slightly faster download speeds then Bell, but it’s slower upload speed drops its score significantly.

The scores are based on tests gathered from users who took the PCMag Speed Test between June 1, 2018, and June 17, 2019. PCMag says over 43,000 were taken in that time.

Further, PCMag only shows results for ISPs or locations with over 100 tests. Then, it looks at the overage throughput up and down, take 80 percent of the download speed and 20 percent of the upload speed and adds those to create its score.

Source: PCMag