LONDON, U.K. – New analysis released today by U.K.-based mobile analytics company Opensignal shows 5G is helping reduce the mobile experience gap between Canada’s urban and rural communities.
Opensignal compared rural and urban areas of Canada as well as comparing Canada with Australia, Brazil, the U.S. and Germany.
“The average overall download speeds of Canadian mobile users averaged ranged from 55.6 to 63.1 Mbps in different types of urban areas. This was 14.1-21.7 Mbps (34.1-52.2%) faster than the speeds in Canada’s rural areas,” according to Opensignal’s report.
“This gap in mobile download speeds between urban and rural areas is higher than the difference in Brazil (7.8%) and Germany (32.3%) but is lower than that in Australia (100.5%) and the U.S. (41.7%). However, the overall download speed experienced by Canadian rural users is much faster than the speed in all four other markets analyzed — 16.2-27% faster than users in rural parts of Australia, Germany and the U.S., and 2.5 times as fast as rural Brazil.”
Canada’s urban-rural divide narrows when 5G speeds are considered. (Please see chart above.)
“Our Canadian rural users experienced average 5G download speeds of 116.7 Mbps — just 12.2 Mbps (9.5%) slower than in large urban population centers of Canada,” Opensignal’s report says. “In fact, we saw no statistically significant difference between the 5G download speeds experienced in rural Canada and its small and medium urban population centers.”
The report also shows users in rural Canada were without a signal 2.6% of the time – less time than in rural Australia (5.2%) and Brazil (6.8%) but higher than in Germany (1.5%) and the U.S. (1.9%). “Given the relative size of those markets, this is an impressive result for Canada,” the report says.
In terms of 5G availability, Opensignal found there is little difference between rural (9.6%) and small urban (10.4%) areas of Canada – although there is a larger difference between medium urban (14.7%) and large urban (14.2%) areas of the country.
“The time our rural Canadian 5G users spent with an active 5G connection (9.6%) is higher than the 5G Availability in rural Australia and Brazil but slightly lower than in rural Germany,” the report says. “Overall, the U.S. saw the highest 5G Availability in rural and urban areas, across all compared markets.”
According to Opensignal, “while rural Canada has benefited from some of the fastest 4G experiences globally in the past, our new analysis shows that this is not yet true with 5G services.” This is attributed to Canadian carriers having limited access to spectrum needed for 5G, which the report notes is now changing.
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Chart supplied by Opensignal.
