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GATINEAU, Que. — The country’s telecom regulator says Canadians are demanding more, and faster, Internet access, especially on mobile devices.

But critics complain that broadband speeds are not keeping up with that demand and it’s getting much more expensive to go online.

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In its annual communications monitoring report, the CRTC says there were three million more mobile broadband subscriptions taken out by Canadians in 2016 compared with the previous year, a 13.3 per cent increase.

And the regulator says Canadians used an average of 1.2 gigabytes of data a month on their wireless devices, a 25 per cent hike from 2015.

Average monthly consumption of data using home internet connections was also up by more than 23 per cent in 2016 compared with the previous year, reaching 128.3 gigabytes, said the report.

The CRTC said that, over the last five years, monthly data used by Canadians increased by an average of 40 per cent annually.