More subscribing to basic service speeds, but availability unchanged

Canadians are increasingly signing up for home internet services that meet the CRTC’s basic service standards of 50 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload, with 36 per cent of high-speed residential subscriptions meeting that target in 2017, compared to 23 per cent a year earlier. “Subscriptions to services meeting these speeds (50/10 Mbps), and with unlimited monthly data transfer, more than doubled to 28% of total high-speed subscriptions from 14% in 2016,” the CRTC’s annual Communications Monitoring Report said. But availability of those plans didn’t increase from last year, when it stood at 84 per cent. The report, released Thursday, also noted that “availability varied greatly between urban and rural areas.” It said 37 per cent of rural households had access to that kind of service, compared to 97 per cent in urban areas. More Canadians in general were signing up for home internet service in 2017, with subscriptions up 3.9 per cent to 86 per cent of households. Average wireline internet revenues were up 5.5 per cent to $58.49 a month. Total telecom revenues were up 3.2 per cent from a year earlier, to $50.3 billion. Fixed internet revenues saw the highest increase, up 7.7 per cent to $11.5 billion. Mobile revenues were up 5.4 per cent to $25.8 billion. The largest five telecoms -- Rogers Communications Inc., BCE Inc., Quebecor Inc., Shaw Communications Inc., and Telus Corp. -- brought in 87 per cent of total revenues. When it comes to mobile retail numbers, the CRTC noted that with “revenues of $24.5 billion, and a 5.3% growth rate compared to 2016, mobile wireless remained the largest sector, representing over 52% of all retail telecommunications revenues in 2017.” And the big three grabbed a larger share of those wireless revenues than a year earlier, accounting for 92 per cent compared to 91 per cent a year earlier. The wireline sector was less dominated by the big telecoms, with 12.4 per cent of revenues going to independent internet service providers. Canadians’ access to LTE-A networks improved from 2016 to 2017, the CRTC said, with 92 per cent having access to the connections, compared to 83 per cent a year earlier. LTE was nearly ubiquitous, with 99 per cent of Canadians having access, a slight increase from 98.5 per cent a year earlier. Availability of fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) connections also increased, from 28 per cent in 2016 to 35 per cent of households in 2017. The report noted those deployments were “mainly in large urban areas.” Data usage by Canadians jumped, with wireless data use increasing 30 per cent over the year, to an average of over 2 GB a month per mobile data subscriber. Fixed data downloads increased 31 per cent to 153 GB a month. Canadians were also uploading more, with that figure increasing 14.8 per cent to 13 GB a month. The number of mobile subscribers increased 3.1 per cent from the previous year, to 31.7 million. Average revenue per user in 2017 was $65.33, a 2.1 per cent increase, and 83 per cent of subscribers had a data plan, a 2.7 per cent increase from a year earlier. The broadcasting portion of the 2018 edition of the report will be released in 2019. — With reporting by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca and editing by Kyle Duggan at kduggan@thewirereport.ca

More subscribing to basic service speeds, but availability unchanged

News | December 21, 2018

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