Quebec now boasts the fastest commercial Internet speeds in North America thanks to a service available to 112,000 households in Laval, just north of Montreal. Service provider Videotron intends to extend the service to Montreal and Quebec City later this year. It provides two tiers of service, a $64.95/month 30-mpbs plan and another at $75.95/month and 50-mbps. According to this CBC article, "Verizon Communications Inc., one of the largest U.S. internet service providers, also offers some customers speeds of up to 50 mbps over its fibre-optic network, but at $139.95 U.S. a month, it's nearly double the cost of Videotron's top service." The system built by Cisco Systems Inc. is said to be capable of 100-mbps speeds but Videotron decided to cap it at 50 because most servers are not able to pump out the information at that speed. "The network was too fast for the internet," says Isabelle Dessureault, general manager of communications for Videotron.
