I think you’ve heard plenty of times from carriers that Canadian wireless subscribers enjoy (for example) the second-fastest average 4G speeds in the world. Well, they might be fast, but when compared to other wireless networks in the world, well, the reality shows a completely different picture.
To compile its sixth Global LTE report, OpenSignal has collected 12,356,994,498 data points from 822,556 users between May 1 and July 23, 2016, from both iOS and Android users in 95 countries, including from Canada.
As it turns out 3G has definitely taken hold in most countries, as 93 had 3G or better signal availability more than half the time.
When it comes to 3G/4G availability, Canada is 10th on the list with 93.16% coverage. The list is led by South Korea with 98.54% 3G availability or better.
The surprise element came when OpenSignal started measuring the actual mobile data speeds the carriers across the globe provide to customers. Forget about theoretical speeds, this is hard data collected from OpenSignal users, hence they give you a glimpse of the real customer experience. Maybe this is a chart Canadian carriers should study more often, as Canada, with an overall speed of 18.32 Mbps, didn’t make it into the top 10 countries. At the top we once again find South Korea, with an overall speed of 41.34 Mbps, followed by Singapore (31.19 Mbps) and Hungary (26.15 Mbps).
An interesting highlight of the OpenSignal study was the time spent on Wi-Fi networks. As you can see from the graph inserted below, Canadians spend more than half of their connected time on Wi-Fi networks, but they can’t compare to the Netherlands-based customers, who spend more than 70% of their time on Wi-Fi.
You can access the full OpenSignal report by following this link.
