Mr. Peter Hendrick:

When we started deploying the network we made a decision to go with the latest, best technology, which was called XGS-PON. That technology will deliver 10 Gbps to the home. Every white box that we install in the home today supports 10 GB of connectivity. In order to upgrade that, the next variant of that will be 25 GB, 40 GB and then 100 GB. We are dependent on the equipment vendors in the market that are developing this technology but the standards have been set and as networks require the demand for that bandwidth the equipment vendors produce the technology. The key point of our technical solution was the type of lasers we install in the equipment. In designing the network we made sure that the lasers that we installed were a certain class. Each laser has a different type of class. Basically, by the class we chose, we will be able to meet the speeds of 25 GB, 40 GB, and 100 GB to the home into the future based on the way we have designed the network in the technology evolution of XGS-PON, which is the foundation of the technology we use.

We have designed the network to ensure that we can deliver that. Typically, that is up to 25 km away from where our head-end location is - homes that are within 25 km of the cable route. We have got to remember that as the cable goes out to all the homes there are patch points and additional connections coming in. Every time we have one of those patch points in connections we have a loss on the cable so we have to calculate all of that in. Depending on how many homes are in an area, it might go from 25 km down to 19 km. It just depends on how many connections come onto the network at that point in time. In addition to the optical network we also have sufficient spare capacity in the network for any new homes connecting to the network over the full life of the contract.