Northern Saskatchewan benefitting from Faster Internet

by ahnationtalk on February 17, 2017338 Views

February 16, 2017

Today SaskTel announced that they have completed upgrading the High Speed Internet service in nearly 2,700 homes across 26 communities in northern Saskatchewan. The residents of these communities now have access to SaskTel’s interNET Connected 5 plan which offers download and upload speeds that are up to 3 times faster than what was available in most of these communities before the completion of this project. Refer to appendix A for the full list of communities.

“The success of this partnership between SaskTel and the Federal Government to bring faster internet services to northern Saskatchewan is encouraging,” said Dustin Duncan, Minister Responsible for SaskTel. “We welcome future opportunities to work with the Federal Government to improve communications services throughout Saskatchewan so that the rural and northern residents of our province may benefit from the social, educational, and business opportunities that advanced communications services can provide.”

The total cost of the project was approximately $9.9 million and included upgrades in all 26 communities as well as the construction of 89 km of fibre from Cigar Lake to Collins Bay and 9 km of fibre from Dillon to St. George’s Hill. The Federal Government’s Connecting Canadians Program is contributing $7.42 million in funding to assist in the completion of this project.

Connecting Canadians to each other and to the world is at the heart of Canada’s digital economy and the key to unlocking our tremendous economic potential. That’s why the Government of Canada is committed to increasing high-speed broadband coverage and to supporting competition, choice and availability of service. Visit Canada.ca/connectingcanadians to learn more.

SaskTel’s InterNET Connected 5 plan offers download speeds of up to 5 Mbps with upload speeds of up to 1 Mbps and includes unlimited usage, free installation, in-home Wi-Fi, spam and email virus filtering, and 24/7 helpdesk support – all for one low monthly price.

About SaskTel

SaskTel is the leading Information and Communications Technology (ICT) provider in Saskatchewan, with over $1.2 billion in annual revenue and approximately 1.4 million customer connections including 617,000 wireless accesses, 389,000 wireline network accesses, 273,000 Internet accesses and 111,000 maxTV™ subscribers. SaskTel and its wholly-owned subsidiaries offer a wide range of ICT products and services including competitive voice, data and Internet services, wireless data services, maxTV services, data centre services, cloud-based services, security monitoring services, advertising services, and international software and consulting services. SaskTel and its wholly-owned subsidiaries have a workforce of approximately 4,000 full-time equivalent employees (FTEs). Visit SaskTel at sasktel.com.

About Connecting Canadians

The Government of Canada is committed to increasing high-speed broadband coverage for rural Canadians. Enhancing and extending access will create new employment opportunities for rural and northern Canadians by increasing their ability to participate in the digital economy. Improved broadband access will also provide households with the ability to use distance education and cloud computing applications, and it will help Canadians in rural and remote communities stay connected to friends and family members.

Through the Connecting Canadians program, the Government is contributing funding to extend and enhance broadband service to a minimum target speed of five megabits per second (Mbps) for over 300,000 Canadians households.

For more information, please contact:

Greg Jacobs, SaskTel Manager of External Communications
Phone: 306.777.3433
Email: Greg.Jacobs@sasktel.com

NT3

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