Nearly two years after a historic Rogers outage took out wireless and internet services across Canada, a new report says most Canadian businesses remain concerned about connectivity downtime.
Ericsson’s Cradlepoint, which describes itself as a leader in cloud-delivered LTE and 5G network solutions, released its 2024 State of Connectivity report, which includes findings from a survey conducted by Censuswide. The survey saw over 500 respondents across various industries in Canada. The respondents were technology decision-makers at or above the senior management level at medium or large businesses (over 250 employees).
According to the State of Connectivity report, 53 percent of respondents experienced one or two hours of connected downtime per week on average in the last 12 months. These downtimes were the result of fixed line or fibre network failure. Moreover, 28 percent experienced three to four hours of downtime per week.
Improving connectivity is paramount, with 25 percent of respondents expecting their business revenue to grow by as much as 14 percent as a direct result of connectivity improvements in the next year.
5G connectivity is also a priority, with 39 percent of respondents indicating 5G will improve security, 38 percent saying it will offer expansion opportunities for their business, and 37 percent saying it would play a major role in infrastructure and transport.
At the same time, businesses see potential hurdles to investing in 5G connectivity solutions. The biggest barriers include the complexity of change (30 percent), perception of costs (27 percent), concerns over the ability to secure connectivity across the business (27 percent) and lack of 5G from carriers (27 percent).
Meanwhile, businesses are looking ahead to the federal government’s plan to offer local licensing, which will make it easier for businesses to access 5G spectrum. This could benefit small internet service providers (ISPs) and rural, remote, and Indigenous communities. According to Cradlepoint, 73 percent of Canadian organizations are planning for local licensing opportunities.
Speaking of government, Cradlepoint said three-quarters of Canadians think the feds are doing their part to ensure reliable connectivity across the country following the Rogers outage, up from 72 percent in 2023.
Security is a major issue as well, with 27 percent of respondents said that in the last 12 months, their businesses were subject to a network security attack. Of those, 28 percent said it was a major security breach resulting in loss of data. As for how the networks were breached, of those who experienced an attack, 40 percent said security was compromised by a data breach, 33 percent by a denial-of-service attack, 33 percent by phishing, and 31 percent by ransomware.
Cradlepoint also found that less than half of organizations are using or are familiar with various security solutions, including multi-factor authentication (45 percent), secure access service edge (39 percent), web browser isolation (38 percent), mobile device management (37 percent), zero-trust network access (36 percent) and edge security (36 percent).
Those interested can read the full report here.
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