Industry committee  Through cable, it's around 50 megabits, and through the airwaves it's around seven megabits. That's what they're advertising. And with seven megabits, you may as well put two cans and a string together.

Industry committee  For us, it's just in the Corunna area, the largest centre. That's where you get the 50 and 10 megabits per second. Some of the more rural areas and the smaller areas of the community can't get anything because it's all about line of sight. The kids go down to the library and sit

Industry committee  They'll never come out and admit to that. We haven't had that much discussion around the 5G itself. I think a lot of it is just because the market is so small that people just aren't interested in the small areas, with so many miles and so many acres to move stuff. I think that

Industry committee  We're right at the start of it. We were just told in January that the money was coming. It'll be put through Cogeco. They've shown us the areas where that money will be spent. It revolves around Enbridge now and their wellheads in some of the more remote areas. All of it will be

Industry committee  We've applied for four different funds over a number of years. With one of the ones that we did receive—and I don't have the name off the top of my head—we could not even find a provider that would put the service in for us. They weren't interested for that kind of money.

Industry committee  No, this was prior to that. It was about four or five years ago that we were going through this process. There were three municipalities that were involved in it. We could not get a provider to pick up the grant and provide the service for us.

Industry committee  That $8,500 per resident was essentially the same project that SWIFT is doing now. The majority of it was fibre optic along the river. You build up areas and then there's a series of towers serviced by fibre optic cable to go to the rural areas around it. It was the whole municip

Industry committee  If we could get it for $1,700, I'd have to sign them up right now.

Industry committee  Thank you very much for the question. You're absolutely right. We get non-stop charges for roaming in the United States. We can be as far away as 10 to 12 kilometres from the border and we're still picking up those charges. You end up having to get your bill redone, and you alw

Industry committee  Absolutely, because with fibre you get that connectivity. Anything through the air will get bounced around in Michigan. Maybe it will come back, but maybe not, and then we have people who get caught with disasters on their hands not being able to communicate with anyone. Our cel

Industry committee  You're absolutely right. Some of the larger corporations don't want to bother. We've dealt with TekSavvy, and even they struggle at times with being able to provide service for some of the smaller communities that we have. We've allowed all kinds of communication devices to be pu

Industry committee  Okay. One of the things we want to make sure of is that the Internet be viewed as an essential service. You may think this is strange, but Detroit, which is 60 miles from us, did a 10-gigabyte transfer speed through fibre optic. Why would we feel that five to 50 Mbps per second i

Industry committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. This is all a new experience for me over the last month with Zoom meetings and things like that, and I appreciate the opportunity to be able to discuss St. Clair Township's Internet coverage before, during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. As you said, m