As I said in our opening remarks, at the outset of the pandemic, despite the various challenges facing our own business, we did make the strategic and concerted decision to accelerate the rollout of our investment in rural and small communities with our wireless home Internet product. As I mentioned, we rolled it out initially to 137,000 households early on in the pandemic and added an additional 80,000 households.
In terms of spectrum, your question is a good one because we use the wireless home Internet technology in smaller rural areas because fibre is simply too expensive to build out. There's no business case for it, and often it's interrupted by geography and climate challenges, so wireless home Internet is the answer to connect last mile rural communities.
The issue with wireless home Internet is it relies on wireless spectrum, and until more spectrum is released in upcoming spectrum auctions, the cellular towers that you see in areas like yours that feed homes and communities are often congested and constrained due to a lack of spectrum as traffic increases.
We're very anxious to participate in the upcoming 3,500 megahertz auction. We believe that, assuming people get their fair share of spectrum in that auction, we will be able to improve and extend that service.