SaskTel announces $337M investment in province

Saskatchewan Telecommunications Holding Corp. is investing approximately $337 million of capital in Saskatchewan over the course of the next 12 months and more than $1.5 billion over the next five years. According to a Wednesday release the investment will give Saskatchewanians access to “cutting-edge” wireless, internet, television, data, and IP-based technologies. “Our government recognizes how critical advanced broadband and wireless technologies are to the overall success and prosperity of our province,” said Don Morgan, the minister responsible for SaskTel. More than $82 million will of the funding will be allocated to Sasktel’ Fibre-to-the-X (FTTx) program (a combination of fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) and fibre-to-the-business (FTTB) initiatives) which will bring the fibre optic infrastructure powering SaskTel infiNET service directly to homes and businesses. “As a fibre based network, SaskTel infiNET service has the capacity to evolve accordingly to support the increased popularity of cloud services, 4K video streaming, and growing adoption of IoT devices by households and organizations,” according to the release. Within its FFTX initiative, $22.8 million will be given to FTTP projects in Saskatchewan’s nine major centres while $35 million will go toward FTTP projects outside the major centre and to its Rural Fibre Initiative. The remaining $24.4 million will be put toward FTTB. Approximately $110.6 million of the funding is allocated for 5G deployment and wireless network enhancements. SaskTel’s wireless network provides service to more than 99 per cent of Saskatchewan’s population, and includes over 1,000 cell sites, according to the release. Its 5G Network Modernization Program will receive the majority of the funding with $103.6 million and the remaining $7 million will be put toward long term evolution (LTE) enhancements. Its wireline network will receive $79.3 million from the total funding – $32 million of which will go toward access and core demand growth; $25 million for network modernization; $7 million for maxTV and maxTV stream growth and service development; and $15.3 million toward customer premise equipment (CPE). Almost $65 million of the investment is to improve customer services and operations through improving information technology and information systems platforms and service enhancements.

SaskTel announces $337M investment in province

Brief | April 13, 2022

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SaskTel announces $337M investment in province

Brief | April 13, 2022

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