SaskTel is calling on Saskatchewan businesses and citizens to take proper precautions and call Sask 1^st Call whenever they are planning to dig or excavate.  In the last few weeks, three separate cable cut incidents that have caused serious outages, isolating entire communities from all emergency services and placing public safety in jeopardy for several hours or even days.

“With one simple phone call, a contractor or private individual can make sure that their work will not put the public or themselves at risk,” said SaskTel President and Chief Executive Officer, Ron Styles. “When cable cuts occur, people can be isolated from all landline, Internet, and cellular services. They have no way to contact fire, police, and medical services until we were able to restore service.”

In the interest of public safety, SaskTel strongly encourages the public and third-party contractors who are digging to always call Sask 1st Call - 1-866-828-4888 for a cable locate or access the system online at sask1stcall.com. Entirely free of charge, Sask 1^st Call makes it simple to ensure that no one will needlessly be placed in jeopardy.

 “While we always work rapidly to restore service, repairing cut cable can still take several hours or days due to our technicians having to manually splice the cable back together,” Styles added.

Once a cable locate is complete, underground lines in the dig area will be marked with paint, stakes or flags.  Anyone digging should not proceed until all facilities have been marked, should respect and preserve the markings, and should dig safely to provide optimum levels of diligence towards preventing damage to underground infrastructure.

SaskTel is a member of the Saskatchewan Common Ground Alliance (SCGA), an organization dedicated to ensuring worker and public safety, by promoting effective damage prevention practices in connection with underground infrastructure activities.

About SaskTel

Saskatchewan Telecommunications Holding Corporation (SaskTel) is the leading full service communications provider in Saskatchewan, with $1.2 billion in annual revenue and over 1.4 million customer connections including over 607,000 wireless accesses, 492,000 wireline network accesses, 250,000 internet accesses and 100,000 maxTV subscribers.  SaskTel offers a wide range of communications products and services including competitive voice, data, internet, entertainment, security monitoring, messaging, cellular, wireless data and directory services. In addition, SaskTel International offers software solutions and project consulting in countries around the world.  SaskTel and its wholly-owned subsidiaries have a workforce of approximately 4,000 full-time equivalent employees (FTEs). Visit SaskTel at www.sasktel.com.

For media inquiries only, please contact:

Michelle Englot, SaskTel Director of External Communications

Phone: 306-777-4476  E-mail:  michelle.englot@sasktel.com