How to read the town pages
Each town page puts four kinds of data on one map: what providers tell the government, where they report fibre or cable, what speed tests have measured, and how each provider's tests compare. Here's what each one shows, and what it can't.
Wired roads
Government data: each stretch of road shows the best wired speed (cable, DSL or fibre) providers report along it, up to 50/10. Fixed wireless, cellular and satellite aren’t counted. It’s what providers advertise; nobody tests it. ISED also publishes the roads with fixed wireless counted, the scope of its own map; the map’s Wired and Wireless switches show either or both. In towns that covers almost every road, so the town figures stay wired, but on rural roads it’s the difference between 1.8% at 50/10 wired and 71% with fixed wireless (rural southern Alberta). How to read the government map covers its limits.
Fibre and cable areas
The same government data lists which technologies each provider reports in each 25 km² hexagon. Fibre and cable can deliver 1 Gbps; DSL, fixed wireless and satellite generally can’t. A hexagon is shaded if any provider reports fibre or cable anywhere inside it, not at every home, so read it with the roads on top. Hexagons with fewer than 5 households are left blank. Wireless alone shows where fixed wireless is reported; both show the government’s own 50/10 claim. Tap one for its providers, roads and measured speeds.
Measured speeds
Speedtest results on home connections (Wi-Fi and wired), averaged by Ookla for each ~390 m square every quarter. Each square shows the best quarter it has reached up to the year on the slider: a later slow quarter is usually someone’s Wi-Fi, not the network, so it doesn’t lower the square. Quarters with average latency over 20 ms don’t count. Starlink, 5G home internet and fixed wireless run that high; fibre and cable don’t. Squares with only those results are grey. A faint square’s best came from one or two devices. Fibre is usually as fast up as down, so fast upload is a good sign of fibre.
Speeds by provider
M-Lab’s open speed tests record which network each test ran on, counting one test per internet address per day. The tables show the typical (median) result and the speed the fastest tenth of tests reached, which shows what a network can deliver. Location comes from the internet address, so Starlink and Xplore tests land in Calgary and are shown for Alberta only. Providers with fewer than 50 tests are left out. NETAGO counts within TELUS, and Rogers is its Shaw network. Phone tests on TELUS’s network can’t be told apart, but 5G rarely uploads above 100 Mbps.