Any market share that's going to the smaller companies is essentially the result of the government policy to bring in a fourth carrier in all regions of Canada, which began in about 2007. A number of those companies that entered the market in 2008-09—Mr. Stein mentioned Wind Mobile, which is now Freedom Mobile owned by Shaw—have sort of failed and have been consolidated and what we're left with is Freedom, Videotron, in Quebec and Eastlink in the maritime provinces. Basically any of the gains and any of the competition that we've seen have been a result of the sustained policy that's been required to bring in these competitors.
If this merger is allowed, it would be tantamount to the government's admission that it is no longer interested in supporting real competition in this space. I think that is why Dr. Winseck and I are really behind the idea that this merger should not be allowed to proceed. We've started to see these competitors getting over a threshold where they can have a serious effect on prices across the board, not just the lower prices they offer themselves, by having an impact on the existing larger providers and forcing them to respond.
Even if, which I think is a very big “if”, someone else was found who could viably run the wireless assets if they were divested—which I very much doubt—we would be starting from square one. It's like Groundhog Day all over again. Canada's mobile wireless market has gone through these attempts by policy-makers to introduce competition in the 1990s and the early 2000s. Finally now we have a situation where these regional competitors are starting to take hold and have a real impact. I think you're saying that the market share for Rogers may go up over 90% in some places. Well, that's what we're going to get here. We're going to get just the large companies left in much of the country, with no real aid in sight.