Presenting an overview of PCMag's 2023 Best Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in Ontario. Thanks to their innovative methodology, PCMag’s evaluation no longer revolves solely around speed but also encompasses customer satisfaction, coverage, and pricing. This comprehensive approach provides a more nuanced understanding of Canadian ISPs and their practical performance for real customers. The enhanced methodology further facilitates a province-specific analysis, offering a detailed breakdown of the data. In this article, we delve into the statistics to identify the top performers both overall and within each of the four specific categories for Ontario.
- Bell Canada
- Rogers
- TekSavvy
As the most populated province, Ontario has the best choice when it comes to quality ISPs. Still, Bell Canada comes out on top. It only gets a 4 out of 10 for speed because some of its competitors have incredible speeds. telMax is the fastest ISP, hitting a median speed of 578.8, and Bell Canada is nowhere near that. In every other category, however, Bell is top tier. It covers 80% of the province, being beaten only by TekSavvy and Altima Telecom. It has the best price plan, tying with Rogers for best value. It also has a solid customer satisfaction rating, which when put altogether, makes it the best ISP in Ontario.
We were able to look more closely at the results, including the individual categories, and we found that Ontario gets some of the best speeds in the country, and they aren’t provided by the big, national companies. telMax (median speed 578.8), Lakeland Networks (323.3), and Beanfield Metroconnect (244.8) all outperform Bell Canada (225.0) when it comes to speed. Of course, that doesn’t mean smaller is faster: the slowest speeds were recorded by users of Sentex (3.8), Storm Internet (7.1), and Standard Broadband (9.5). Most ISPs provide coverage to the vast majority of the province. SpaceX Starlink provides 100% coverage, but many providers cover 91%, including TekSavvy, Altima Telecom, Distributel, EBOX, Primus (part of Distributel), and VMedia. Bell Canada provides the cheapest price, charging just $0.03 per Mbps, but most of the ISPs that provided pricing data stay below the $0.10 mark. For customers who want to pay much more, there are options: Xplore and SpaceX Starlink charge $1.120 and $1.40, while Bell DSL charges $2.00.
Finally, looking at the results of the PCMag Readers’ Choice Overall Satisfaction survey, we find most of the more regional or smaller ISPs don’t show up, so brand recognition seems to play an important role. TekSavvy tops the leaderboard with a score of 8.1 out of 10, and Videotron and Virgin Plus share joint second place with a rating of 7.8.
Ontario has the best selection of ISPs across Canada but the larger national ISPs still hold the most advantage thanks to their combinations of coverage, name recognition, and pricing. Some of the smaller providers have impressive speed but lack in other areas. The ‘best’ ISP is the one that fits a customer’s needs best, whether they prefer a personal touch, a speedy connection or just great value. With these rankings, it should be even easier for consumers to find the right ISP for them.
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