As I was saying, by the end of this year tens of thousands of households will be connected, and that's in about a month. By the end of next year, over a quarter of a million households will be connected. By the following year, close to half a million households will be connected—and that's just what the federal government is doing.
Our plan includes a deliberate attempt to coordinate existing efforts across the country, including provinces and territories like yours. I was speaking with Minister Fitzgibbon not too long ago, and we're coordinating our efforts to connect every community in Quebec to this essential service.
This isn't aspirational. We have targets; we have timelines. The federal government has put its entire force behind it, with the most significant investment ever. In fact, if you add up all previous investments in broadband, our government has invested 10 times more in the past five years than all previous governments combined.
We are serious about this. This is an essential service—