Industry committee  In my opinion, SWIFT is a very regional project. It covers a lot of Canada's population, but it's actually a fairly compact area. We are a not-for-profit model, and we don't own the infrastructure, but our needs, which are the community's needs, are taken into account. It's not just the bottom line of the providers that drives decision-making.

Industry committee  We are following the broader public sector procurement guidelines, absolutely, because we've been funded by public funds. We've taken our large area and split it into about 30 smaller areas so that smaller providers are able to compete with larger providers when we do release RFPs.

Industry committee  I'm at seven minutes. Would you like me to stop, Mr. Chair?

Industry committee  One more minute would do it.

Industry committee  Okay. The way we are approaching this is to take a typical rural area where there is some existing fibre and a lot of services, and we are augmenting that fibre optics with the fibre optics that we're subsidizing, which will be owned by the private sector. The key to this is that the new fibre is going to have a very high capacity, and there are going to be entrances into that fibre every kilometre along the way.

Industry committee  Thank you for having us. Thanks for your time today, committee. We at SWIFT in southwestern Ontario believe that broadband really should be an essential utility. We cannot participate in the modern economy today without it. We believe that SWIFT is the solution that is in place for southwestern Ontario today.