Last week, PCMag published its annual ‘Fastest Mobile Networks Canada’ test results, crowning Telus as the winner for the third year in a row.
The PCMag tests showed Telus dominating speed tests across the nation, either alone or tied with Bell. Rogers had a single win in Guelph, Ontario. Download speeds from Telus hit a maximum of 824 Mbps, Bell hit 799 Mbps and Rogers at 564 Mbps.
“Telus has a highly optimized core network for routing connections through the internet, which seems to have made the critical difference in some of our cities,” wrote PCMag.
As for Rogers, PCMag said it has “a basically reliable network that has middling performance. It isn’t bad, but it doesn’t lead the way it did in the early days of LTE.”
Rogers was a distant third from its competitors in terms of speed and today the company attempted to clarify how the PCMag test was different from its previous victory in the P3 “Best in Test” measurement, which does not focus solely on speed.
The wireless carrier laid out the following chart on its community forums detailing the stark differences between P3 and PCMag:
When asked about the Rogers comparison of the P3 test results versus PCMag, lead mobile analyst for the latter, Sascha Segan, told iPhone in Canada in a statement, “Rogers wants to play up their strength, which is overall voice and data coverage across the many miles of Canada’s wide expanse. P3’s test showed that strength. Our test focuses on high-speed data performance in the cities and towns where most Canadians live and work, and we found that Telus does better on that front.”
Segan also had some questions to ask about the P3 evaluation, noting, “It’s hard for me to evaluate P3’s claims more closely, as unlike us, they don’t show exactly where within cities they tested or how their point scores were calculated. I also note that they used Galaxy S9 rather than S10 phones, and some of Telus’s network advantages tend to show up only on the latest devices. But everyone’s telling the truth here; the question is just which truth.”
Performing speed tests over LTE networks can take a big hit, especially for those with limited data plans. This speed test on an iPhone 11 Pro Max on Telus hit download speeds of 537 Mbps and used up nearly 1GB of data.
What’s more important to you? Overall wireless coverage or download speeds?
