The operator took first place in video experience, voice app experience, download speed experience and upload speed experience, said Opensignal.
It also jointly won the three remaining categories — 4G availability with Rogers, 4G coverage experience with Bell and games experience, where the research company saw a three-way split.
“Telus users continue to enjoy the best video experience in Canada,” said Opensignal.
Ibrahim Gedeon (pictured), the CTO of Telus, commented on LinkedIn yesterday: “Kudos to Telus’s diverse team of engineers and innovators who strive for global excellence in supporting Canadians and putting the ‘work’ in network.”
He said the company’s staff was “earning global recognition for our work”, and said this was “the result of relentless innovation, dedicated teamwork and fearlessly challenging the status quo”.
According to UK-based Opensignal, Telus won the video experience award with a score of 74.5 points on a 100-point scale, just half a point shy of the excellent rating, for 75 points and above.
Scores for Bell and Rogers both declined marginally by 0.9% to 72.1 points and 68.5 points, respectively. But Opensignal pointed out: “With these modest changes, our Bell and Rogers users continue to enjoy a very good video experience.”
Mobile operators in Canada are closely matched in mobile games experience, said the research company. “We saw fierce competition for our games experience award, with no statistical difference between all three operators. Telus, Bell and Rogers became the joint winners on this measure and continued to place in the fair games experience category (65-75 points). A fair rating means most users deemed the experience average; it also indicates that the gameplay experience was generally controllable, with the majority of users noticing a delay between their actions and the outcomes in the game.”
Bell and Rogers users saw their download speeds improve, but Telus is top. Users in Canada reported the fastest average download speeds on Telus’s network, said Opensignal. “The operator achieved an impressive download speed experience score of 72.8Mbps.”
However, Bell Canada and Rogers both improved, so Telus’s lead on its competitors reduced to 3.4Mbps on Bell and 12.9Mbps on Rogers.
“Meanwhile, Telus also beat both Bell and Rogers in a close-run race for upload speed experience, with its users observing an average speed of 11.2Mbps, 0.6-0.8Mbps higher than their peers.”
Telus continues to lead in Opensignal’s measure of the quality of experience for over-the-top (OTT) voice services — mobile voice apps such as WhatsApp, Skype and Facebook Messenger, said the company.
Opensignal noted that Canadian mobile operators are well into the 5G deployment cycle.
Telus launched its 5G network initially in Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver in June 2020 and since has expanded to 19 more cities and towns in British Columbia, Alberta, Quebec and Ontario.
Bell says it has 5G services available in around 150 locations across major urban areas and smaller communities across Canada, which it plans to double up by next year.
At the end of 2020, Rogers also announced it had expanded its 5G non-standalone (NSA) network to 26 new cities and towns in Alberta, British Columbia, New Brunswick, Ontario and Quebec, now reaching 160 communities across the country.
