Are you getting the internet speed that you are paying for?

Annette Gerard
Apr 23, 2017
2 min read

Last week, my normal cool as a cucumber self, felt very frustrated. I wanted to throw something or let out a primal scream because of very slow internet speeds when uploading some photos and also just when surfing the internet. It was taking about 15 minutes just to attach a 600 k photo in an email. When using my iPhone wifi on my computer the UPLOAD SPEED was 6.34 Mbps but with my normal computer internet wifi it was only 0.08 Mbps.

It was just fine the week before so what could cause this to happen this week? I did some troubleshooting to figure it out: Was it my computer? perhaps it is full ... no. Was it that the neigbourhood was suddenly all downloading? ... no. Was it that my router had issues? ... no. Was it my modem was broken? ... no. I called Rogers, they told me that it was Apple. I called Apple they said it was Rogers. After a couple of hours with Apple we figured out that it must be Rogers. After a couple of hours with Rogers they said that my modem was broken and I need to go to Rogers to swap it for a new one. I have been performing speed tests with very low numbers but then this morning I tried it again and the problem has been fixed! Still have the same modem.

So here is what I recommend that you do. Call your internet service provider, look online, or look on your bill; find out exactly what download or upload speeds are you paying for? Then run a speedtest. You can find this speed test at www.speedtest.net. Run it and write down your results. Are YOU getting what you are paying for?

Terms Explained

Download Speed:

This denotes how quickly Internet content is transferred to your computer or home network in Mbps. You want a high number.

Upload Speed:

This speed is naturally the opposite of download speed, describing how quickly you are able to upload content to the Internet. This is important if you use your Internet to regularly share personal videos, music, and images. You want a high number.

Ping:

Reflects the amount of latency in a computer network, denoting the amount of time it takes data to travel from one computer to another on the network. It is normally expressed in milliseconds. A lower number is better.

Average Computer Internet Speeds in Canada

According to Ookla, a global broadband testing firm, as of August 2016, Canada's average household download speed is about 30 Mbps, with an upload speed of about 8 Mbps.