Top Six ISPs in Canada by Subscriber: Q2 2004

In Canada's relatively well-connected market, the ILECs and MSOs rule, but don't count competition out completely.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [September 15, 2004]

Rank	ISP	Subs. (thousands)	Date & Source
1	Bell Sympatico (DSL and dialup)	2,477	[August 4, 2004] Press Release [.pdf]
2	Shaw (cable broadband)	997	[June 25, 2004] Quarterly Report [.pdf]
3	Telus [DSL and dialup]	925	[August 6, 2004] Supplement to Quarterly Report [.pdf]
4	Rogers (cable broadband)	851	[July 21, 2004] Press Release
5	Vidéotron Ltée (cable broadband and dialup)	473	[undated] Company Website
6	Cogeco (cable broadband)	240	[July 2, 2004] Press Release [.pdf]

In this, our first ranking on Canadian ISPs in several years, ISP-Planet is very grateful to Jupiter Research Senior Analyst Joe Laszlo for putting the numbers together. Laszlo has a more detailed analysis available to Jupiter Research subscribers.

Laszlo points out that according to the 2001 census, Canada had about 11.6 million households, so the top six ISPs in Canada, with 5.963 million, have 51 percent of all households. That's very very impressive.

Cable providers especially are working on rolling out innovative value-added services. Rogers, for example, notes, "on February 12, 2004 . . . we announced an initiative to deploy an advanced broadband Internet Protocol (IP) multimedia network to support primary line voice-over-cable telephony and other new services across our cable service areas in 2005."

That's clearly the next step for the Canadian market.

Meanwhile, many providers will have to improve customer service, as Broadband Reports' GBU page shows only Cogeco rated a B for tech support. The one broadband ISP listed in BBR but not on our chart, dccnet, appears to be an alliance of three local cable providers in British Columbia, one of which has only 20 employees. The company's ratings are stellar, second only to Cogeco. It's no surprise to us that the competition provides better service than the monopoly providers.

As a side note, Shaw's Big Pipe fiber project, initiated in 2000, is saving the company a significant amount of money and helps the company negotiate peering agreements.

If you have any concerns or would like to suggest any companies be added, send us a note at the contact the editors link below. We would have liked to add AT&T Canada and two province-wide ILECs, MTS (Manitoba) and SaskTel (Saskatchewan) to the list, but were unable to obtain subscriber data.