Mississauga joins growing list of partners for CIRA’s Internet Performance Test

CIRA has added Mississauga to a growing list of communities across the country testing the Internet connectivity in their regions. 

CIRA is working with communities across the country to develop and deploy Internet performance tests that help local municipal leaders understand the dynamics of connectivity in their regions. The latest test was recently deployed by the City of Mississauga.

The test is helping the team at the City understand the state of connectivity in their region and how that might affect city services and strategies.

“Studying our Internet performance will help improve the City’s ability to deliver programs and services through technology,” said Shawn Slack, Director, Information Technology.  “Having consistently high quality Internet services across the city is a key element to continuing to provide reliable, two-way communications with citizens,” says Ivana Di Millo, Director, Communications.

The test helps municipalities benchmark their Internet performance and engage citizens in measuring the City’s progress. The test is crowdsourced, meaning that each test taken helps build a more robust data model.

“Reliable Internet service is crucial to the services residents depend on every day. Everyone can help measure the quality of Internet service in Mississauga. It only takes a few minutes,” said Slack.

The test is simple to take and provides the tester information about their individual connection and how they perform in relation to the rest of their neighborhood.

CIRA’s goal in developing this test goes further. CIRA is working to support Canadian communities in measuring and evaluating their smart-community projects.

“High-performance Internet is a backbone for the smart community projects that help economies flourish and citizens engage,” said Dave Chiswell, VP of Product Development at CIRA. “At CIRA, we built our Internet Performance test to do two things. First, we wanted to provide decision makers in communities across the country with a way that they can measure and benchmark their Internet performance, helping add data to their decisions about digital policy and programs. Secondly, we wanted to empower individual Internet users in those communities with information about their Internet connection, helping them understand what they pay for and make informed decisions about their connectivity needs.”

CIRA’s test is helping to inform smart community projects across the country and many of the participants in CIRA’s program are leading the way in this work. CIRA has announced partnerships with seven communities as part of its pilot, with more communities to come.