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Coax vs DSL vs fibre

Three kinds of wire bring wired internet to Canadian homes. They are not equal, and the differences that matter (upload speed, distance, sharing and future headroom) rarely show up in the ads.

Coax vs DSL vs fibre
Transcript

Almost every wired home connection in Canada runs over one of three things: phone company copper, called DSL, cable company coax, or fibre. All of them get sold as high-speed internet. The differences that matter rarely show up in the ads.

DSL runs over copper laid for voice, decades ago. Its big limit is distance: past about two kilometres of copper, usable speed drops sharply. Upload is a fraction of download.

Cable runs fibre to a neighbourhood node, then coax to each house. Rough figures from our field experience: Rogers, formerly Shaw, puts about two hundred homes on a node. Reliability is the weak side. Coax is a shared medium. In our experience, one noisy device plugged into the segment can briefly knock out everyone on it.

Fibre runs glass all the way to your building, so distance mostly stops mattering at the scale of a town. It's shared too, at a splitter, typically one to thirty-two or one to sixty-four. But newer gear runs up to ten gigabits in both directions.

Most fibre to the home has been built by the phone companies. The CRTC says cable company fibre reaches only about five percent of households. Rough figures from our field experience: TELUS uses larger aggregation points, serving about two thousand customers or more each, with less fibre beyond them.

Fibre's big advantage is the future. You upgrade the boxes at each end, not the glass in the ground. So check the upload number, and ask whether the fibre goes all the way to the building.

  1. DSL: copper laid for voice

    Almost all wired home internet in Canada runs over phone copper (DSL), cable coax or fibre, all sold as “high-speed.”

    DSL uses copper laid for voice, decades ago. Its limit is distance from the office or cabinet: as a rough rule, past about two kilometres, usable speed drops sharply, and VDSL2 hits its headline speeds only within a few hundred metres. Hence fibre-to-the-node: shorter copper. And upload is a fraction of download.

    copper (DSL) office or cabinet speed drops past ~2 km coax (cable) node shared by every home on it fibre splitter office glass to the building

    Three rows, one per wire. Top: a copper line runs from the phone company's office or cabinet to a home and fades along its length; past about two kilometres, speed drops sharply. Middle: one coax line runs from a neighbourhood node past several homes, each tapped off the same line, so they share it. Bottom: a fibre line runs from the provider's office through a splitter and on to the home.

    Three last-mile wires. DSL runs copper from the phone company's office or a roadside cabinet, and its speed drops with distance. Cable runs coax from a neighbourhood node, shared by every home on it. Fibre runs glass all the way to the building, shared only at a splitter. Illustration

  2. Coax: shared on a node

    Cable is hybrid fibre-coax: fibre to a neighbourhood node, then coax to each house, using DOCSIS. CableLabs says DOCSIS 3.1 supports up to 5 Gbps down and 1.5 Gbps up, shared across the neighbourhood. Rough figures from our field experience: Rogers (formerly Shaw) puts about 200 homes on a node.

    Upload is weak: the traditional design typically leaves on the order of 100 Mbps shared across a neighbourhood group. Mid-split and high-split upgrades, and DOCSIS 4.0 (symmetrical multi-gigabit, says CableLabs), widen it.

    In our experience, reliability is weak too: coax is a shared medium, and one noisy device plugged into the segment can briefly knock out everyone on it.

    Shared on one node fibre node ~200 homes per node (not all drawn) Rough figures from our field experience One noisy device: a brief outage fibre node noisy device in our experience: can briefly knock out everyone on it

    Top: a fibre line reaches a neighbourhood node; from the node, one coax trunk branches into four lines that pass rows of homes, every home tapped off the same coax. A note says about 200 homes per node, rough figures from our field experience. Bottom: the same node, where one home is marked as having a noisy device; the coax and every home on the segment are shown faded, knocked out, because in our experience one noisy device can briefly take down everyone on the segment.

    Cable runs fibre to a neighbourhood node, then coax shared by every home on it: about 200 homes per node (not every home is drawn). Rough figures from our field experience. Below: in our experience, one noisy device plugged into the segment can briefly knock out everyone on it. Illustration

  3. Fibre: glass to the building

    Fibre runs glass all the way to your building, so distance mostly stops mattering at the scale of a town. Most home fibre in Canada is a passive optical network: an unpowered splitter shares one fibre, typically 1 to 32 or 1 to 64; the CRTC’s 2026 rate order uses 1:32 in its cost model. GPON gives about 2.5 Gbps down and 1.25 Gbps up, shared; XGS-PON runs up to 10 Gbps both ways (ITU G.9807.1), and TELUS told the CRTC it began adding it in 2020. You upgrade the boxes at each end, not the glass.

    The phone companies built most of it: the CRTC said in 2024 that cable company fibre reached only about 5% of households. Rough figures from our field experience: TELUS uses larger aggregation points serving about 2,000 customers or more each, with less fibre beyond them.

    Rogers fibre coax node ~200 homes per node TELUS fibre aggregation ~2,000+ customers

    A generic town like Medicine Hat, not a map. Top: Rogers runs fibre to a small neighbourhood node, then coax cable from the node to about 200 homes. Bottom: TELUS runs fibre to a larger aggregation point that serves about 2,000 customers or more, with less fibre between it and the homes. Rough figures from our field experience.

    Illustration, not real locations. Rogers (formerly Shaw): fibre to a neighbourhood node, then coax to about 200 homes per node. TELUS: larger aggregation points serving about 2,000 customers or more each, with less fibre beyond them. Rough figures from our field experience. Illustration

Before you buy

  • “Up to” means up to. On DSL, line length sets your speed.
  • Check the upload number.
  • “Fibre” in a name isn’t fibre to your house. Ask whether it goes all the way to the building.
  • Who owns the wire matters more than the logo. See wholesale access.

In smaller Alberta centres, fibre mostly depends on where TELUS, or a municipal or regional network, has built. See the community page and reading the government map.

Sources