Thank you very much, and thank you for the invitation. I'm honoured.
We have a rather unique body of knowledge and study regarding local governments' participation in various investments. My focus is on local government policies around broadband. From the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in Minneapolis, I run a program called “community broadband networks”. This came about largely because we felt that the Internet—we recognized this about 12 years ago—was becoming essential for local businesses, local economies, and quality of life issues that communities were concerned about, but local governments had no ability to compel existing providers to meet the needs as they saw them. We were looking at ways in which local governments could ensure that they had the networks they needed, so we focused on a number of different areas.
I should say that it's a somewhat limited number of governments that have done this sort of thing. We're tracking local government networks in the United States and Canada. There are also quite a few in Sweden. I've had a chance to visit with some of them. Other than that, there aren't very many. This is something that is somewhat specialized and unique to certain nations.
One of the things we've been most known for is what local governments are doing in terms of building their own networks. Two common examples that we cite are Wilson in North Carolina and Chattanooga in Tennessee. For the purposes of talking about rural broadband, I wanted to bring them up, because their goal is not only to serve themselves, which they are doing on a city-wide basis, offering gigabit services, very high-reliability networks, and low prices that are competitive. They're really doing a tremendous job by all measures. They also have ambitions to serve their neighbours. They would very much like to serve the rural areas around them, but have been prohibited from doing so by state law.
We do have other states, such as Minnesota, in which we have local governments such as Windom—it's in what I think of as farm country in southwest Minnesota—which has built a network for itself. It's about 4,000 people. They expanded that to serve 10 towns near them and the farm country in between, a model of where local governments that were focused on regional improvement have been able to first serve themselves and then expand to nearby areas.
One of our areas of study is more relevant to rural, and that is the rural electric and telephone co-operatives we have, which have brought telephone and electricity to much of the rural United States. An example that I would cite is a surprise for many people; in North Dakota, the vast majority of the territory is covered with fibre optics. In fact, if you're on a farm in North Dakota, you're far more likely to have high-quality Internet access than if you're in one of the population centres. That was done almost entirely with co-operatives but also with local, independently owned companies that reinvested in their communities because they are local communities, much like Jay Thomson was just discussing in terms of the incentive for locally based entities.
Those are cities that have built their own networks. Those are co-operatives that have built their own networks. Our electric co-operatives are just getting into this. We're tracking 60 electric co-operatives that are offering service to businesses and residents outside of their own purposes for keeping the grid stable. We expect that to be well over 100, and possibly approaching 150 by the end of this year. For comparison purposes, we have about 800 or 900 electric co-operatives in the United States. That's a substantial jump.
The final thing we tend to study in terms of local governments and these co-operative solutions is partnerships. Here again we have something that's directly relevant to Canada. One of the companies that has one of the most promising partnerships is Ting. It's a company run by Canadians and staffed by Canadians, and it operates almost entirely in the United States of America. It has partnered in five different local fibre optic investments, building fibre optic networks. It also has a wireless division that resells wireless service.
In the city of Westminster, Maryland, which I've written a report about, Ting has partnered with the city to bring universal coverage at affordable rates. It's a balanced partnership that we've identified as a model in which both the government and the private sector share in the upside and the downside. We've seen too many things in the United States that are called partnerships where one side really dominates the risks and the other side dominates the benefits. I think that's something to be concerned about. Ting has offered a model for being willing to share in both.
The reason I bring them up is that they are interested in finding Canadian cities to work with, so it's directly relevant.
I will note one final thing. In preparing, I was looking at some of the briefs. First of all, there's a lot of very good information on the record. wanted to amplify something, which is the need for both last-mile and middle-mile connectivity.
We have seen programs that have focused too much on a middle mile, or backbone in different parlance, connecting one geography to another geography, rather than distribution fibre, on the mistaken notion that with enough backbone fibre, one will spur investment in last-mile services. In our experience, that does not happen. The economics of last mile are challenging. They are so challenging that having a more robust middle mile does not change them significantly.
I strongly concur with the many people who have stated that we need to be focused on both in order to solve this challenge in rural areas.
I'm hoping to be helpful in answering questions relevant to my background.
Thank you very much.