How does Alberta's internet compare with world leaders?

You can see from our results how the different types of service in Alberta compare with global standards.

Are you a "real" rural user? We need more data on Satellite, Wireless and Dial-up performance.

The CBC ran a story "Canada's broadband networks not ready for future: report"  on 15th September saying that Canada's broadband service is falling behind other countries.

Unfortunately the students who produced the report did not distinguish between different parts of Canada or between urban and rural users. And for some reason they tested response times against servers in the US! We want to test the Internet in Alberta and compare rural and urban performance.

So we want you to run the Shaw Speed Test, note the results, come back here and post your results as a comment below. (Your comment will only show up once we have published it. This is to protect us from spammers and libel suits. If you want us to keep your results confidential, just ask.) You can also go to speedtest.org and compare results. For example, as a Shaw user in Calgary, with Shaw I got a latency (ping) of 51ms, could download at 4.7mbps and upload at 441kbps. With speedtest.org's San Francisco server the latency was 129ms and from New York the download speed was under 1 mbps.

When you  post your results please give us as much information as you are willing / able to share. In particular we would like to get

• Latency (ping)
• Download speed
• Upload speed
• Location: Rural or Urban, name of community
• Size of community
• Type of service (Cable, DSL, Dial-up, Wireless, Office network, Coffee shop wi-fi ...)
• Monthly cost

Feel free to run a test every time you connect from a new location. You could also run tests at different times and see how your results differ. If they do, let us know!

We'll do our best to analyze results and share them at the October 31st Communities without Boundaries video-conference first / last mile session.