Industry committee  The wireless auction is very important from two components. It is making more of the valuable wireless spectrum available for companies to be able to deploy these advanced services to Canadians. We've undertaken in the next years to have a total of 700 megahertz of commercial mob

Industry committee  That would be similar because this is ubiquitous coverage. I would say especially in urban centres, where we would find our very high coverage, where we have the 75% availability at 50 megabits, that would pertain to most businesses and beyond; they would have even higher speeds

Industry committee  It's simply the build-out of the networks. As we have cable networks upgrading to what we call DOCSIS 3.0, to higher-grade technologies, fibre to the node, I think you'll find in those categories it will even out over time. It's simply the implementation in both countries. We're

Industry committee  We have seen very significant progress over time, as you'll notice in the chart that was in our presentation. You will see that the private sector is driving that growth. So for 50 megabits you'll notice that only two years ago we were at 30% and now we're at 75%. This is very si

Industry committee  I can respond to that. In the past, broadband was mostly delivered over wired networks. That would be telephone networks and cable networks. What we're seeing now, with rapid advances in technology, is that we not only have significant upgrades through the telco and cable netwo

Industry committee  Usually we would define broadband by the speed tiers, and we would start with 1.5 megabits. That's what we would consider the minimum, and then it would go up from there into what you consider next-generation networks. With a next-generation network you'd be looking at 25 to 50 m

Finance committee  Go ahead, Allan.

Finance committee  This would come under the industry committee, yes.

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  But this is a targeted measure that is specifically targeting a capital area for small companies. The larger companies have no shortage of capital. They have ample sources of capital, and they're not near their limits, so therefore they're not in need of this change. It's targete

Finance committee  They are in a position of being incumbents. If you're an incumbent, you have advantages. You have the customer base. You have your sunk investment. They're an attractive investment target, whereas new entrants have very high risk and very high leverage. They're similar to what yo

Finance committee  We're not experts on the other sectors per se. That would be a question—

Finance committee  We have seen those benefits already, and since we've had new entrants into the market since the government action to set aside spectrum, we have seen improvements, better pricing, and better service plans. However, these companies are reaching the limits of what they can do under

Finance committee  Yes, it is.

Finance committee  This is part of the government's overall approach to telecommunications, and the minister also announced the rules for the spectrum auctions at the same time. Part of those rules have specific rural targets for companies that acquire spectrum. We also have a program in place, the