BCE Inc. is leveraging its fibre-to-the-home network to launch a new gigabit Internet service, making it the first large telecommunications company in Canada to offer such connections. It will launch first in Toronto, where 50,000 homes and businesses will have “first access” to the Gigabit Fibe service this summer, a number that Bell said in a press release will later expand to 1.1 million premises in the city. Bell said it would extend the service to “other cities in Ontario, Quebec and the Atlantic provinces as soon as this summer in some locations.” It listed a number of cities “primed for Gigabit Fibe,” including Quebec City and some parts of...
A lack of competition is behind slow upload speeds for Canadian broadband Internet customers, according to analyst Alan Breznick, and only the entry of a disruptive force like Google Inc. will bring the country up to speed. Despite the rollout of new technologies, Canada ranks 55th out of 172 countries when it comes to broadband upload speeds, stuck behind places such as Cambodia, Kenya and Mexico, according to American broadband testing and web diagnostics company Ookla. Canada has slipped down the overall broadband speed rating to 36th in the world, down six spots from June...