1908-1920
In 1908, to address the need to deliver telephone service in rural areas, the Saskatchewan government passed several pieces of legislation referred to as the Telephones Act.
The first act, “The Railways and Telephone Department Act,” created SaskTel’s predecessor – The Department of Railways, Telegraphs, and Telephones. The telephone section of the act allowed the department to establish, operate, administer, and expand local service in urban areas and long distance service throughout the province.
A second act, “The Rural Telephone Act,” permitted groups of farmers to form rural telephone companies to provide local telephone service to rural areas. Also passed was “The Municipal Telephone Act,” which encouraged communities to form municipal telephone companies.
In 1909 the department built its first telephone exchanges at Hanley and Melville. The important purchases of existing telephone companies operating in the province were also made that year – The Bell Telephone Company, The Saskatchewan Telephone Company, and the Wappella-Harris Telephone Company – which considerably expanded the department’s system.
The newly acquired facilities consisted of 18 telephone exchanges, 53 long distance offices, and 792 kilometers of long distance pole lines. Among the telephone exchanges purchased were those at Estevan, Moose Jaw, North Battleford, Prince Albert, and Regina. These facilities, added to those built by the government, were providing telephone service to 5,710 subscribers at the end of February 1910.
In 1911, SaskTel expanded with the purchase of Saltcoats Distrcit Telephone Company, the North-West Telephone Company (Saskatoon), and the Swift Current System. By the end of 1911, nearly fifteen thousand local subscribers were connected to the systems exchanges.
On June 30, 1912, Regina’s telephone office was completely destroyed by the famous Regina Cyclone. Long distance service had been restored within 24 hours; local service was restored on a limited basis within six weeks of the cyclone.
By the close of 1912, a long distance network serving all major centres in the province had taken shape. On December 1, 1912, Yorkton was added to the provincial system with the purchase of the North West Electric Company.
The growth of the system was somewhat curtailed during the First World War due to material and manpower shortages. Despite this, five telephone exchanged were converted to automatic dial operation – Regina (1914), Prince Albert (1915), Swift Current (1918), Moose Jaw (1918), and Qu’Appelle(1919). The automatic dial system served Regina until November 1955, when it was replaced by the seven-digit numbering system.
In 1919, the Qu’Appelle exchange was the first in North America to operate as a Community Dial Office (CDO). A CDO is an automatic call switching office designed to serve a small community area with dial service.