Today SaskTel announced that the residents of Creighton, Denare Beach, and Sturgeon Landing will now be able to enjoy the benefits of High Speed Internet that is more than 3 times faster than before. SaskTel has upgraded the Internet service in these communities from 1.5 Mbps to 5 Mbps download speeds.

“The government of Saskatchewan understands that northern communities need access to High Speed Internet,” said Dustin Duncan, Minister Responsible for SaskTel. “As the world becomes more connected, these types of upgrades will benefit both residential and business customers in these communities.”

“This upgrade is a direct result of two key investments that we made in our infrastructure to improve services in Northeastern Saskatchewan,” said Ron Styles, SaskTel President and CEO, “The first investment was a 3 year $30 million project, in partnership with Cameco and SaskPower to rebuild the backhaul network in Northeastern Saskatchewan and significantly increase bandwidth available throughout the region. In addition, we invested $10 million to reinforce our radio backhaul network in Creighton and Denare Beach as well as upgrade the microwave radio system between Sandy Bay and Pelican Narrows.”

These upgrades are part of SaskTel’s commitment to invest over $300 million in capital in Saskatchewan in 2016/17 and $1.4 billion through 2016-2021. Investments like these will ensure that Saskatchewan will continue to receive some of the best communication and entertainment services in the world.

Added Styles “We are pleased that we were able to upgrade the Internet service in these communities to 5 Mbps and strive to bring at least that level of service to all of the communities in Saskatchewan.”

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 616,000 wireless accesses, 402,000 wireline network accesses, 267,000 Internet accesses and over 107,000 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 www.sasktel.com.

For more information, please contact:

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