84% can access internet at basic service standard, only 11% do: CRTC

The CRTC’s annual Communications Monitoring Report, released in full Thursday, outlined that while Canadians are increasingly subscribing to faster internet service and more data, only 11 per cent of them subscribe to wireline plans that meet the CRTC’s minimum basic service standard. That measure — set at 50 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload last December, plus the option of signing up for unlimited data — outlines the minimum service that needs to be available to Canadians (though the report notes subscribing is at the consumer’s discretion). Currently, an average of 84 per cent have the option of subscribing to plans that meet that criteria, though availability differs greatly between urban areas, where 96 per cent have access to such options, and rural areas, where only 39 per cent do. That’s not to say Canadians’ internet speeds aren’t increasing. The average download speed for all tiers went from 29.15 Mbps last year, when the average upload speed was 5.5 Mbps, to 42.03 Mbps download and 8.7 Mbps upload in 2016, the report showed. Canadians are also using more bandwidth. The CRTC said residential high-speed internet subscribers used an average of 128.3 GB downloading and uploading. That was up from a year earlier when that figure stood at 104 GB, and a significant increase from the 33.8 GB used by Canadians five years ago. Wireless data usage went up as well. “Canadian wireless service subscribers now use, on average, 1,225 MB of wireless data per month, a 25 increase from the 2015 average of 981 MB per month,” the report said. The percentage of mobile wireless subscribers with a data plan went from 74 per cent to 81 per cent. Those subscribers used an average of 1.6 GB of data each month, up 12.9 per cent from a year earlier. There were also more of them; Canada had 30.8 million wireless subscribers in 2016, a 3.3 per cent increase from the previous year. Telecom revenues overall were up two per cent over the past year to $48.7 billion, while broadcasting revenues continued falling, down 0.5 per cent to $17.9 billion. The report noted that the “wireless service market sector is the largest sector of the retail telecommunications service market, accounting more than half (52%) of all retail telecommunications service revenues,” while the retail Internet service market sector was the fastest-growing, growing by 10.1 per cent between 2015 to 2016, to represent 23 per cent of all retail telecommunications service revenues. The report also had figures on the wholesale sector. Wholesale wireline revenues were $2.9 billion, up 1.9 per cent, while wholesale wireless revenues were up 6.9 per cent to $1.2 billion. It also included Statistics Canada data on communications spending for 2015, the latest year for which statistics available. “Average monthly household spending on communications services increased from $215 in 2014 to $218 in 2015,” the report noted. CORRECTION: A previous version of this story said that 84 per cent of Canadians had access to basic service speeds. That statistic (as well the stats about rural/urban availability and the number of Canadians who subscribe) is for Canadians who have access to plans that meet the speed minimums and have an unlimited option. — With reporting by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca and editing by Bryson Masse at bmasse@thewirereport.ca

84% can access internet at basic service standard, only 11% do: CRTC

News | November 9, 2017

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84% can access internet at basic service standard, only 11% do: CRTC

News | November 9, 2017

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