A post on the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association blog reminded me to take a look at the latest quarterly update to the CRTC’s Communications Market Report.
The joint CRTC – Statistics data is showing that Canadian consumers are continuing to get more value from their internet and mobile services.
CRTC and Statistics Canada data shows an additional 500,000 households connected to high-speed internet in 2021 for a total of 12.1M, representing an increase of 4.2% over 2020’s subscriber total of 11.6M.
At year-end 2020, 3.3M (28%) of subscriptions were for speeds of 300Mbps or more; such connections increased to 3.9M (32%) over the course of 2021. Downloaded data traffic nearly doubled between year end 2019 and 2021, increasing from an average of 228.4GB in fourth quarter 2019 to 404.8GB by year end 2021.
On the wireless side, the latest report shows dramatic price reductions across-the-board, while average usage climbed 40% to 5.3 GB in 2021 over 2020 (3.8 GB).
The Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association blog summarized the CRTC pricing data in this graphic:
As prices went down, CRTC and Statistics Canada report that average usage increased:
CRTC data shows that there were 1.2M more mobile subscriptions at the end of 2021 (33.4M) than there were in the first quarter of 2021 (32.2M).
As prices continue to rise in the rest of the economy, Canadians are paying less, while getting more for their communications services.