Internet in Canada - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Web use

Canadian web users are similar to those in the other countries. The most popular sites in Canada are the major international ones, such as Google

Google

Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...

, Yahoo!

Yahoo!

Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...

, and MSN

MSN

MSN is a collection of Internet sites and services provided by Microsoft. The Microsoft Network debuted as an online service and Internet service provider on August 24, 1995, to coincide with the release of the Windows 95 operating system.The range of services offered by MSN has changed since its...

.

The most popular native Canadian sites are those of the major Canadian news companies, all of which maintain an extensive web presence. According to a February 2008 report by comScore, the most popular Canadian sites are those of Quebecor Media, principally Canoe.ca, followed closely by the sites of CTVglobemedia

CTVglobemedia

CTVglobemedia , was one of Canada's largest private media companies. Its operations include newspaper publishing , television broadcasting and production , radio broadcasting , and their respective Internet properties.Originally established by BCE and the Thomson family in 2001 combining CTV Inc.,...

which includes globeandmail.com

The Globe and Mail

The Globe and Mail is a nationally distributed Canadian newspaper, based in Toronto and printed in six cities across the country. With a weekly readership of approximately 1 million, it is Canada's largest-circulation national newspaper and second-largest daily newspaper after the Toronto Star...

and CTV.ca

CTV television network

CTV Television Network is a Canadian English language television network and is owned by Bell Media. It is Canada's largest privately-owned network, and has consistently placed as Canada's top-rated network in total viewers and in key demographics since 2002, after several years trailing the rival...

File sharing

Main: File sharing in Canada
File sharing in Canada
File sharing in Canada relates to the distribution of digital media in that country. Canada had the greatest number of file sharers by percentage of population in the world according to a 2004 report by the OECD. In 2009 however it was found that Canada had only the tenth greatest number of...

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

has the greatest number of file sharers

File sharing

File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digitally stored information, such as computer programs, multimedia , documents, or electronic books. It may be implemented through a variety of ways...

per capita in the world according to a report by the OECD.

Canada's copyright laws are unclear on the legality of some file trading. In general, the unauthorized copying or distribution of copyrighted material, whether for profit or for personal use, is illegal under Canada's Copyright Act. However, certain exemptions are made for fair dealing

Fair dealing

Fair dealing is a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work, which is found in many of the common law jurisdictions of the Commonwealth of Nations....

copying of small portions of copyrighted works, for activities such as private study, criticism, and news reporting. Furthermore, the Act allows that the copying of sound recordings of musical works for the personal use of the person who makes the copy, is not copyright infringement. This is supported by a levy on blank recording media, which is distributed to record labels and musicians. While the unauthorized downloading or uploading of complete copyrighted works such as books, movies, or software is illegal under the Act, the situation regarding music files is more complex.

Fibre optic networks

Fibre cabling was already deployed by BCE in Ontario and Quebec using FTTN deployment. On February 4, 2010, Bell Canada

Bell Canada

Bell Canada is a major Canadian telecommunications company. Including its subsidiaries such as Bell Aliant, Northwestel, Télébec, and NorthernTel, it is the incumbent local exchange carrier for telephone and DSL Internet services in most of Canada east of Manitoba and in the northern territories,...

announced the launch of Fibe 25 services and Bells plan to create FTTH or Fibre to the home services, offering speeds up to 100 Mbit/s. Shaw Cable is currently running field trials of 1 Gbit/s Ethernet fibre to the premises in select locations in Vancouver and Calgary.

Broadband offerings

The following table summarizes residential broadband offerings in Canada. None of them are available nation-wide and the chart does not include bandwidth cap

Bandwidth cap

A bandwidth cap, also known as a bit cap, limits the transfer of a specified amount of data over a period of time. Internet service providers commonly apply a cap when a channel intended to be shared by many users becomes overloaded, or may be overloaded, by a few users...

s, abilities of customer equipment, or the speeds after Peer-to-peer

Peer-to-peer

Peer-to-peer computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads among peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the application...

Traffic shaping

Traffic shaping is the control of computer network traffic in order to optimize or guarantee performance, improve latency, and/or increase usable bandwidth for some kinds of packets by delaying other kinds of packets that meet certain criteria...

. In particular, some products are 'up to' the speed quoted and may not deliver that speed in all areas. Some companies have more than 4 plans and plans may change at any time, so this list is not comprehensive.

Service Provider	Economy	Standard	Advanced	Fastest
Shaw Shaw Communications Shaw Communications is Canada's largest telecommunications company that provides telephone, Canada's fastest Internet and television services as well as broadcasting and soon Wifi. Shaw is headquartered in Calgary, Alberta...	1 Mbit/s down, 256 kbit/s up	7.5 Mbit/s down, 512 kbit/s up	25, 50 or 100 Mbit/s down, 2.5 or 5 Mbit/s up	250 Mbit/s down, 15 Mbit/s up
Rogers Hi-Speed Internet Rogers Hi-Speed Internet Rogers Hi-Speed Internet is a broadband Internet service provider in Canada, owned by Rogers Communications. Rogers previously operated under the brand names Rogers@Home, Rogers Yahoo! Hi-Speed Internet, and Road Runner in Newfoundland...	500 kbit/s down, 256 kbit/s up	12 Mbit/s down, 512 kbit/s up	24 Mbit/s down, 1 Mbit/s up	50 Mbit/s down, 2 Mbit/s up
Vidéotron Vidéotron Vidéotron GP is a Canadian integrated telecommunications company active in cable television, interactive multimedia development, video on demand, cable telephony, wireless communication and Internet access services. Currently, the company primarily serves Quebec, as well as the francophone...	3 Mbit/s down, 800 kbit/s up	8 Mbit/s down, 1 Mbit/s up	15, 30 or 60 Mbit/s down, 1.5, 2 or 3 Mbit/s up	120 Mbit/s down, 20 Mbit/s up
Cogeco Cogeco Cogeco Inc. is a Canadian media and communications company. The name is an acronym for Compagnie Générale de Communication .-History:...	3 Mbit/s down ? Mbit/s up	14 Mbit/s down, 1 Mbit/s up	16 Mbit/s down, 1 Mbit/s up	50 Mbit/s down, 1 Mbit/s up
EastLink	1.5 Mbit/s down, 128 kbit/s up	5 Mbit/s down, 1 Mbit/s up	20 or 40 Mbit/s down, 1 or 2 Mbit/s up	100 Mbit/s down, 5 Mbit/s up
Bell Internet	2 Mbit/s down 800 Kbit/s up	6 Mbit/s down, 1 Mbit/s up	16 Mbit/s down, 1 Mbit/s up	25 Mbit/s down, 7 Mbit/s up
Bell Aliant	1.5 Mbit/s up, 640 Kbit/s down	7 Mbit/s down, 640 kbit/s up	15 Mbit/s down, 15 Mbit/s up	170 Mbit/s down, 30 Mbit/s up
Deveca	512 kbit/s down, 512 kbit/s up	5 Mbit/s down, 800 kbit/s up	Business 6 Mbit/s down, 800 kbit/s up	1 to 30 Mbit/s down, 1 Mbit/s up
Nexicom	514 Kbit/s down, 512 Kbit/s up	2 Mbit/s down, 256 kbit/s up	5 to 20 Mbit/s down, 1 Mbit/s up	N/A
Telus TELUS Telus is a national telecommunications company in Canada that provides a wide range of telecommunications products and services including internet access, voice, entertainment, video, and satellite television. The company is based in Burnaby, British Columbia, part of Greater Vancouver...	Up to 1 Mbit/s down, Up to 256 kbit/s up	1.5 to 6.0 Mbit/s down, Up to 1.0 Mbit/s up	10.0 to 15.0 Mbit/s down, Up to 1.0 Mbp/s up	21.0 to 25.0 Mbit/s, Up to 2.0 Mbit/s up
SaskTel SaskTel Saskatchewan Telecommunications is a provincial Crown Corporation operating under the authority of the Saskatchewan Telecommunications Act. It is the only remaining Crown Corporation in the Canadian telecommunications industry....	256 kbit/s down, 128 kbit/s up	1.5 or 5 Mbit/s down, 128, 384 or 640 kbit/s up	10 Mbit/s down, 800 kbit/s up	25 Mbit/s down, 2 Mbit/s up
MTS Manitoba Telecom Services Manitoba Telecom Services Inc. , or MTS , formerly Manitoba Telephone System, is the primary telecommunications carrier in the Canadian province of Manitoba and the fourth largest telecommunications provider in Canada with 7000 employees...	256 kbit/s down, 256 kbit/s up	7.5 Mbit/s down, 2 Mbit/s up	15 Mbit/s down, 2 Mbit/s up	25 Mbit/s down, 2 Mbit/s up
Colbanet Colbanet Colbanet is one of the larger independent Internet Service Providers in Quebec, offering Internet via ADSL 2+, ADSL, and dialup...	N/A	5 Mbit/s down, 800 kbit/s up	N/A	24 Mbit/s down, 1 Mbit/s up
TekSavvy TekSavvy TekSavvy Solutions Inc. is a Canadian residential and business telecommunications company based in Chatham, Ontario, with branches in Toronto, Ottawa and Sudbury. In most of Canada it is a wholesale operator and CLEC, providing a last mile service that utilizes existing infrastructure from Bell...	512 kbit/s down, 512 kbit/s up	5 Mbit/s down, 800 kbit/s up	Business 6 Mbit/s down, 800 kbit/s up	10 or 30 Mbit/s down, 1 Mbit/s up
Telehop	N/A	3 Mbit/s down, 256 kbit/s up	10 Mbit/s down, 512 kbit/s up	15 Mbit/s down, 1 Mbit/s up
Acanac	N/A	5 Mbit/s down, 800 kbit/s up	6 Mbit/s down, 800 kbit/s up	N/A
ElectronicBox	640 Kbit/s down, 512 Kbit/s up or 3 Mbit/s down, 400 Kbit/s up	5 Mbit/s down, 800 kbit/s up or 8 Mbit/s down, 1 Mbit/s up	15 Mbit/s down, 1.5 Mbit/s up or 30 Mbit/s down, 2 Mbit/s up	60 Mbit/s down, 3 Mbit/s up
Novus Novus (ftth carrier) Novus Entertainment is a Canadian telecommunications company providing television, digital phone, and high-speed Internet services via a fibre optic network. The company is licensed by the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission as a Class 1 Broadcast Distribution Undertaking...	25 Mbit/s down, 10 Mbit/s up	50 Mbit/s down, 10 Mbit/s up	100 Mbit/s down, 10 Mbit/s up	300 Mbit/s down, 15 Mbit/s up
Velcom	512 kbit/s down, 512 kbit/s up	5 Mbit/s down, 800 kbit/s up	6 Mbit/s down, 800 kbit/s up	N/A
Yak Telecommunications	2Mbps download /800kb upload	5Mbps download/800kb upload	10Mbps download/800kb upload	N/A

The legal definition of broadband

Broadband

The term broadband refers to a telecommunications signal or device of greater bandwidth, in some sense, than another standard or usual signal or device . Different criteria for "broad" have been applied in different contexts and at different times...

in Canada is 1.5 Mbit/s (megabits per second). This is essentially the bandwidth required to transmit compressed VGA (640x480) motion video with modest quality. However, in recent years the competition between the major broadband Internet providers has caused frequent increases in the available bandwidth provided to home users.

Regional Canadian ISPs peer through a few major Internet Exchange Point

Internet Exchange Point

An Internet exchange point is a physical infrastructure through which Internet service providers exchange Internet traffic between their networks . IXPs reduce the portion of an ISP's traffic which must be delivered via their upstream transit providers, thereby reducing the average per-bit...

s, the most notable of which is the Toronto Internet Exchange

Toronto Internet Exchange

The Toronto Internet Exchange Community is a not-for-profit Internet Exchange Point located in a carrier hotel at 151 Front Street West in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. , TorIX had 142 members and peak traffic rates of 75 Gbit/s, making it the largest IXP in Canada...

. However, these regional networks usually share the same backbones for longer distance connectivity.

The largest DSL provider in Canada is Bell Internet (formerly Bell Sympatico). Bell owns and maintains physical layer connectivity through a combination of optical fibre networks, DSLAM and Customer Premise Equipment. Few other DSL providers have comparable network infrastructure so a lot of them instead use lines provided by Bell. Their speed is however limited to 5 Mbps down, 800 kbps up for residential lines. ADSL is the predominant technology while ADSL2+ is quickly emerging as the new standard, fueled by the urgency to compete with cable companies in the digital TV market. In British Columbia

British Columbia

British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...

(BC), Alberta

Alberta

Alberta is a province of Canada. It had an estimated population of 3.7 million in 2010 making it the most populous of Canada's three prairie provinces...

(AB), and parts of Quebec

Quebec

Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....

(QC), the incumbent telco is Telus, owning the DSLAMs, the fibre, and provides many services Bell does, however at slower speeds. An example of the speed difference is a standard DSL line in BC/A is 1.5 Mbps, while a standard DSL line in Ontario

Ontario

Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....

(ON)/QC can be up to 25 Mbps; the top tier internet speed is 14 Mbps/s in BC/AB and 25 Mbps/s in ON/QC.

The other major players offering DSL and IPTV services are Sasktel in Saskatchewan

Saskatchewan

Saskatchewan is a prairie province in Canada, which has an area of . Saskatchewan is bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, and on the south by the U.S. states of Montana and North Dakota....

and Manitoba Telecom Services

Manitoba Telecom Services

Manitoba Telecom Services Inc. , or MTS , formerly Manitoba Telephone System, is the primary telecommunications carrier in the Canadian province of Manitoba and the fourth largest telecommunications provider in Canada with 7000 employees...

(MTS) in Manitoba

Manitoba

Manitoba is a Canadian prairie province with an area of . The province has over 110,000 lakes and has a largely continental climate because of its flat topography. Agriculture, mostly concentrated in the fertile southern and western parts of the province, is vital to the province's economy; other...

. Download speeds are up to 8 Mbps, though recent upgrades now make HDTV and much higher rates possible.

For Cable offerings, standard North American DOCSIS

DOCSIS

Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification is an international telecommunications standard that permits the addition of high-speed data transfer to an existing cable TV system...

based equipment are used.

Usage-based billing (UBB)

Internet bandwidth limits and caps are considered by many to be too restrictive, due to the increasing popularity of online streaming media

Streaming media

Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a streaming provider.The term "presented" is used in this article in a general sense that includes audio or video playback. The name refers to the delivery method of the medium rather...

services such as Netflix

Netflix

Netflix, Inc., is an American provider of on-demand internet streaming media in the United States, Canada, and Latin America and flat rate DVD-by-mail in the United States. The company was established in 1997 and is headquartered in Los Gatos, California...

, which require large amounts of bandwidth.

The decision to impose bandwidth caps on smaller independent ISPs caused controversy in 2011 when the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), Canada's telecommunications regulator, approved a request by Bell Internet to begin, on March 1, 2011, to apply a bandwidth cap on the users of smaller independent ISPs who use Bell's last mile

Last mile

The "last mile" or "last kilometer" is the final leg of delivering connectivity from a communications provider to a customer. The phrase is therefore often used by the telecommunications and cable television industries. The actual distance of this leg may be considerably more than a mile,...

infrastructure. This new billing structure is called "usage-based billing" or UBB.

Bell pushed for a cap as small as 25 gigabytes of transfer per month, plus a $1-2 CAD

Canadian dollar

The Canadian dollar is the currency of Canada. As of 2007, the Canadian dollar is the 7th most traded currency in the world. It is abbreviated with the dollar sign $, or C$ to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies...

surcharge for every GB over the limit. The stated intent was to prevent the customers of independent ISPs from congesting Bell's network, because many independent ISPs offer service with unlimited bandwidth, while most major Canadian ISPs do not. The CRTC was criticized for allowing Bell to use anti-competitive practices to favor its own Internet and television offerings. Bell is also under fire for forcing its own pricing structure and business on its wholesalers.
Bell admits that only about 10 percent of its subscribers (at the time of said download cap) exceed their limit, resulting in additional billing.

Many savvy Internet users also accuse Bell of falsifying information to the public regarding network congestion. Network congestion is primarily caused by many users accessing the Internet at the same time (after school/work, 5pm-10pm) and not by heavy users alone.

On February 2, 2011, industry minister Tony Clement

Tony Clement

Tony Peter Clement, PC, MP is a Canadian federal politician, President of the Treasury Board, Minister for the Federal Economic Initiative for Northern Ontario and member of the Conservative Party of Canada....

and Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper

Stephen Harper

Stephen Joseph Harper is the 22nd and current Prime Minister of Canada and leader of the Conservative Party. Harper became prime minister when his party formed a minority government after the 2006 federal election...

called on the CRTC to reverse the decision. The next day, the CRTC announced that it would delay its decision by 60 days.

There are some supporters for usage-based-billing (UBB) at reasonable rates instead of the current $2/GB. Wholesalers, such as TekSavvy

TekSavvy

TekSavvy Solutions Inc. is a Canadian residential and business telecommunications company based in Chatham, Ontario, with branches in Toronto, Ottawa and Sudbury. In most of Canada it is a wholesale operator and CLEC, providing a last mile service that utilizes existing infrastructure from Bell...

, provides its cable Internet services at $37/month with 300GB (12¢/GB). Retailers, such as Rogers

Rogers Communications

Rogers Communications Inc. is one of Canada's largest communications companies, particularly in the field of wireless communications, cable television, home phone and internet with additional telecommunications and mass media assets...

, provide service at the same speed 10Mbps/512kbps at $47/month with 60GB (78¢/GB). The difference of 56¢/GB between the wholesaler's and incumbent's pricing is one of the main reasons why UBB supporters are against UBB. They fear that the incumbents would gouge Internet users by charging them more than 12¢/GB. Some also claim that it costs the incumbents (Rogers

Rogers Communications

, Bell

Bell Canada

, Shaw Communications

Shaw Communications

Shaw Communications is Canada's largest telecommunications company that provides telephone, Canada's fastest Internet and television services as well as broadcasting and soon Wifi. Shaw is headquartered in Calgary, Alberta...

, and Telus

TELUS

Telus is a national telecommunications company in Canada that provides a wide range of telecommunications products and services including internet access, voice, entertainment, video, and satellite television. The company is based in Burnaby, British Columbia, part of Greater Vancouver...

) as low as 3¢ to send 1GB of data through.
Supporters also suggest that instead of a penalty-based system (heavy users pay more), a credit-based system (light users be credited back monthly) would be much more consumer friendly and fair.

External links

DSL Reports - Extensive site on broadband with user reports from around the USA and Canada

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Web use

File sharing

Fibre optic networks

Broadband offerings

Usage-based billing (UBB)

See also

External links