I think the role of government has to be very limited. The industry is willing to make the investments, has made the investments, and will continue to make investments. If there is one role for government, it is for remote and under-served areas—and limited to that.
I would add that when the government decides to provide support, as it has in recent years, it should be technology neutral in its approach as well, because there's more than one way to deliver the service. I don't see it as the role of the government to pick winners or losers; its role is really to support the percent of the population that is hard to reach.
Keep in mind, in Canada today wireless networks cover 99% of the population and between 17% to 19% of the territory. There's 1% of the Canadian population that lives over 83% of our territory. Economically, it may be hard to reach all of those people with mobile service. You can reach them with wireless, but it would be a different type of technology. There are ways to bridge the gap, but we must keep in mind that sometimes asking the government to do it all may be worse than doing what is in the best interest of most. Keep in mind that, of the 99% of the population that are covered by wireless, 97% have access to 3G, which means broadband mobile today, right now. So when you think of that, it's really amazing what is being done now. We have more of the world's fastest networks in Canada than any other country today. A lot has been done already without government help.
We're always concerned that when the government tries to help, it actually tries to slow things down. There are things that could be done, for instance, to ensure that there are more investments. We currently have the highest licensing fees in the G-7. If you lower those fees, the money will be invested in networks. There are ways for the government to help but it's not always by spending more tax dollars.