The Toronto Star's Tyler Hamilton reports today that "an independent test of 41 wireless broadband networks across North America has ranked Toronto Hydro's downtown Wi-Fi zone the top performer."

"The 14-city study, conducted by strategic consulting firm Novarum of Akron, Ohio, tested the speed, reliability and ease of use of a range of wireless broadband technologies, including Wi-Fi mesh, cellular broadband data and third-generation digital mobile networks," Hamilton writes. "Toronto's One Zone network, which went live last September and now covers a six-square-kilometre area downtown, was found by far to be the fastest wireless network."

"The performance is amazing," says Novarum managing director Phil Belanger. "The service we got on the street in Toronto was better than our home broadband. In the best places it was up to five megabits (per second) upstream and downstream, which is extremely unusual."

Still, it's not all good news for Toronto. "While the One Zone ranked tops on performance, it came in seventh in the ease-of-use category, giving it an overall ranking of third place - behind first place St. Cloud, a suburb of Orlando, Fla., and second place Mountain View, Calif., where a Wi-Fi network has been built by Google Inc.," Hamilton writes.

Toronto Hydro's press release is here.