763,000 calls and 4.8 Million texts expected on December 25^th

SaskTel estimates that its customers will make approximately 763,000 calls on December 25 this year. That estimate includes approximately 263,000 landline calls and approximately 500,000 wireless calls. SaskTel also projects that customers will send approximately 4.8 million text messages and use more than 73,000 Gigabytes (GB) of data on December 25.

“The holiday season is a special time for all of us,” said Ron Styles, SaskTel President and CEO. “The way we connect with our loved ones has changed over the years, however whether you prefer to call, text, or video chat with your loved ones this holiday season SaskTel has you covered.  On behalf of everyone at SaskTel, I’d like to wish all of our customers a safe and happy holiday season.”

The increase in calling during the holidays may result in some temporary network congestion. This is a normal result of any sudden increase in activity on SaskTel’s landline and wireless networks.

Customers can minimize any inconvenience by remembering to:

• place calls outside of the busy hours of 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.;
• verify phone numbers in advance;
• take time zones into consideration.

Roughly 38% of calls on December 25 are expected to be made to locations within Saskatchewan, while about 56% of the calls placed will be to Canadian destinations outside of the province. About 4% of the calls will go to the United States and other various international locations.

Holiday calling stats and tips

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, 395,000 wireline network accesses, 272,000 Internet accesses and over 110,000 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.

For more information, please contact:

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