We are currently serving 50 communities, and in every case, they are the ones who asked us to come up with a solution to the fact that they did not have broadband access. Everyone has heard Bell's advertisement where the beavers explain how nice it is to have broadband access. However, many communities do not have access to it.
When we go into a community to offer high-speed Internet, we work in partnership with the communities and our principle is to offer service that is no more expensive than in the cities. But in doing so, we run up against the dominant companies, who use the very high costs in regions to subsidize the battles they are waging in the large cities.
For example, the factor is 10 to 1 for the same broadband capacity in a region and in large urban centres. In addition to the fact that citizens no longer have access to the same services when they do not live in densely populated regions, the situation is such that industries and businesses that are increasingly reliant on electronic business move. For the dominant companies, that changes absolutely nothing, since they drop one Bell service for another Bell service, or they remain clients.
We serve rural communities, but we are unable to have fair access to the infrastructure because we are stealing part of the monopoly's market. Deregulation works in large urban centres, but it is untrue to say that it works in rural regions. There are always monopolies, and it is not profitable for other players to enter the market. As soon as we try to do it, they throw a monkey wrench into our plans by refusing to grant us access to the infrastructure and circuits.
So deregulation may work in large urban centres according to the law of the jungle, if I can put it that way, but that is not the case in rural areas. There will continue to be a monopoly, even with deregulation, and companies will require assistance through more comprehensive deregulation.