Montreal Tech Watch

ISP performance in the US

ISP Performance in Canada

This week’s good news for Canadian consumers come from Netflix. With one of the most advanced video-streaming infrastructure, and an openess typical of upstarts, the innovative american company has published performance graphs of different internet service providers.

We all know each ISP advertise differently their service, one touting bandwidth, another focusing on price, others focusing on service, but it was always difficult for consumers to assess which ISP was superior. Netflix’s measurements show performance from 1st Oct 2010 up to 15th Jan 2011, and show bandwidth delivery from 1,400 kbps (Clearwire, US) to 3,200 kbps (Shaw, Canada)

On average, Canadian ISPs are at around 2,700 kbps while American ISPs are at 1,800 kbps, showing clearly that Canadians get superior service after all (!). This is good news, even though we’ll need to wait until Netflix goes mainstream in Canada. The service is known mostly to young canadians in urban environments, who have expendable budget for digital products and superior internet service. I expect those numbers to drop down when Netflix get known in other areas of the country, where broadband Internet isn’t as fast as in Montréal.