SaskTel today announced that it is investing $11.8 million to expand its LTE wireless network to nearly everyone in Saskatchewan. Once the project is complete SaskTel’s LTE wireless network will cover 99% of the population of Saskatchewan.

“Our government understands that the residents of this province want to be connected at all times. Having access to SaskTel’s world-class LTE wireless network helps meet that desire for all of the people in our province” said Jim Reiter, Minister Responsible for SaskTel. “SaskTel has a long history of investments in this province to enhance their services all over Saskatchewan.”

“We anticipate that LTE will be available to almost everyone in Saskatchewan by April 2017,” said Ron Styles, SaskTel President and CEO. “With SaskTel LTE, our customers will experience faster speeds than before which will improve their experience when they’re streaming content on their wireless device, downloading music and videos, or sending pictures to their friends and family while they’re on the go almost anywhere in the province.”

Styles added, “Furthermore, the deployment of LTE province wide will lay the groundwork for future network enhancements, such as the deployment of Voice over LTE (VoLTE) which we expect to start rolling out around mid-2017.”

In May, SaskTel announced a commitment to invest $331 million in capital in   Saskatchewan in 2016-2017 and $1.4 billion through 2016-2021.  These investments will ensure that Saskatchewan will continue to receive some of the best communication, information, and entertainment services in the world including maxTV, Internet, data, and future IP-based services through industry leading 4G/LTE and infiNET networks.

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 over 614,000 wireless accesses, 404,000 wireline network accesses, 266,000 Internet accesses and 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
E-mail: Greg.Jacobs@sasktel.com