Canada ranks first globally for 4G download speeds amid COVID-19 pandemic: report

Canada has ranked first worldwide in terms of 4G download speeds amid the COVID-19 pandemic according to Opensignal’s latest report.

Opensignal is monitoring the impact of increased use of mobile data use across the world, and notes that Canada’s networks are continuing to operate without any change despite the spike in usage.

Towards the end of January, the average 4G download speed in Canada was 62.8Mbps. Near the end of March, the average was 61.6Mpbs, which indicates that speeds have stayed relatively the same.

“Our users in Canada, Mexico and the U.S. saw a similar experience at the end of March as in earlier in the year,” the report notes.

Although Canada ranked first, the Netherlands followed closely in second place with an average of 58.9Mbps towards the end of March, indicating that its networks are holding up well too.

The U.K. seems to be having a bit of difficulty keeping up with the surge in usage, as the region’s average 4G download speed towards the end of January was 25.7Mbps, and went down to 18.3Mbps near the end of March.

The Opensignal report looks at several other factors amid the COVID-19 pandemic and notes that mobile use is happening at different hours of the day.

“Normally, mobile users see their slowest daily download speeds in the evening at around 8pm or 9pm. However, with so many people at home, we are starting to see speeds fall during the morning and afternoon to similar levels, bringing down overall speeds,” the report notes.

Interestingly, the report also indicates that since majority of residents do not live in city centres, they are spending less time in locations where service providers have heavily invested in infrastructure, and more time in areas where they may not have designed infrastructure to manage large daytime traffic loads.

Regardless of this, Canadian carriers seem to be handling the increased traffic relatively well in terms of download speeds.

Source: Opensignal