Study concludes Canadian broadband is too expensive and too slow
A study released this week by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School this week, which compared broadband service across thirty OECD countries has concluded that Canada’s is lagging most developed countries in critical broadband measures.
Despite high penetration rates, researchers found Canada to rank low on critical measures such as download speeds, 3G mobile Next Generation Connectivity and most importantly, pricing.
The study found Canada to be a second quintile performer in penetration, down from the first quintile in 2003 and only a fourth quintile performer on speeds and prices.
Canada ranked 26th on 3G penetration, 25th out of 30 on maximum speed, 17th on overall speed, 20th on the number of public wireless hotspots, 25th on average advertised speed and 25th on overall pricing.
Of 28 countries that offered very high speed internet service, Canada ranked second last on pricing. Canada was also just one of eight countries, none of whom were top performers, which imposed bit caps.
The report’s verdict on Canada was noted in the section discussing pricing which concluded “While penetration there is high, not only is speed lower, but prices too are high in every tier of service.”
Source: Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School
Top ranked countries on various price measures were Japan, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, France and the U.K. The United States was ranked 12th.
Read the entire Berkman Center Broadband Study (.pdf file)
http://www.fcc.gov/stage/pdf/Berkman_Center_Broadband_Study_13Oct09.pdf
Comment below or discuss Canadian Broadband practices in our Canadian High Speed Internet forum. http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=28
rogers has been ripping people off forever. marketplace did a story on this issue and they proved rogers is ripping people off. i’m paying $200. a month to rogers. that’s basic phone, cable with a few extras but not much and internet. that’s it. my internet is slow and clunky. i think this is an extreme rip-off. typical corporate greed. now rogers wants us to pay even more for cable. what are these greedy scumbags going to do when all the money is gone because they’ve sucked everybody dry. the crtc can jump in the lake and drown. they’re too useless and gutless to do anything about it. harper is a jack-ass.
In S. Korea people can download couple gig files in couple minutes.. the internet here in canada is ridiculously slow.. ridiculously, slow. part of the problem is that there are only so many internet providers.. and low population .. therefore low competition.