Today SaskTel announced plans to invest approximately $4 million to upgrade 35 wireless towers spread throughout rural Saskatchewan. The upgrades are expected to be complete on all 35 towers by the end of March 2018. As part of the upgrades, SaskTel will be adding LTE network carriers to the towers which will increase their LTE capacity by 20% to 100%. See the attached appendix for a full list of towers to be upgraded.

“Our government understands that having access to fast and reliable communications services are vital in today’s digital world,” said Dustin Duncan, Minister Responsible for SaskTel. “This most recent round of wireless upgrades from SaskTel will greatly benefit a number of residents, farms, and businesses who call rural Saskatchewan home.”

“Today’s announcement further demonstrates our commitment to deliver world-class communications services to our customers all throughout the province,” said Doug Burnett, SaskTel Acting President and CEO. “These upgrades will help bolster our network and add capacity to address the ever-growing demand for wireless data.”

These upgrades come less than a year after SaskTel completed its most ambitious LTE expansion which increased SaskTel’s LTE footprint to cover 99% of the population of the province. These latest wireless upgrades are part of SaskTel’s commitment to invest over $300 million of capital in Saskatchewan in 2017/18 and $1.4 billion through 2016-2021.

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, 374,500 wireline network accesses, 276,000 Internet accesses and 108,500 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:
Michelle Englot, SaskTel Director of External Communications
Phone: 306.777.4476
E-mail: michelle.englot@sasktel.com