Canada needs to work on regaining status as ICT leader

Canada continues to perform well but slips two positions to ninth spot among innovation-driven economies on the Connectivity Scorecard 2010. Like the United States, Canada benefits from an early lead in adopting Information and Communications Technology (ICT) but other countries seem to be fast catching up.

Canada scores well in the area of broadband penetration yet, like the US, only modestly in terms of quality of the broadband infrastructure, as measured by download speeds, compared to the leading nations in this category, such as Korea and Japan. Canada performs well in consumer usage and skills, with high levels of voice usage, as well as uptake of online banking and e-commerce. Businesses in the country enjoy the highest personal computer penetration in the world, together with high penetration of business broadband, secure servers for electronic transactions, and web presence online. In the business usage and skills area, Canada tops the measure of human capital quality introduced this year, with graduates making up a higher share of total employees in the country than anywhere else. Government related scores are also high although below the leading group of nations.

Mobile adoption and usage, especially 3G, has been historically weak in the country but there are indicators that this might change. The Canadian telecom market has seen the entry of more players and adoption of new technologies, which is expected to provide an impetus to mobile telephony growth. Fiber deployments are also lagging, although cable operators are deploying next generation high speed cable access technologies. Canada also needs to increase business investments in ICT, especially in research and development.

Canada Connectivity Performance by Scorecard Component