Mr. Peter Hendrick:

I will describe it in three parts. When the Department started the procurement process, it undertook a mapping exercise. It went to the commercial market and looked at what the retail and wholesale operators' programmes were for building networks over the seven-year deployment period. Over a number of consultations, the last of which took place in September 2019, the Department received an update on where networks would stop.

When designing the network, we have to take into account not just today's need, but the need in three, ten or 15 years' time. We consider the capacity requirement that is available and design our network and build our infrastructure on that basis. Plugging into someone else's network might seem simple, but it is not from a technical or operational perspective.