SaskTel today announced that it has partnered with the City of Melfort to launch a “Smart City” initiative focused on bringing practical and innovative solutions to the city to improve current operations and optimize future community development.

“Our government is excited to see the City of Melfort establish itself as prairie hub for smart city technology,” said Don Morgan, Minister Responsible for SaskTel. “SaskTel is in the ideal position to ensure Saskatchewan communities of all sizes can capitalize on the explosive growth we are seeing worldwide in smart city solutions.”

Through a Memorandum of Understanding, SaskTel and the City of Melfort have adopted a Smart City Innovation Sandbox model to spur innovation and empower both parties to rapidly evaluate new technologies, tools and software products in a flexible and collaborative way. Already, the partnership has helped to uncover ways for the community to find cost-savings and reduce energy use.

“SaskTel is proud to be a partner is this exciting initiative for the City of Melfort,” said Doug Burnett, SaskTel President and CEO. “While there are many core services that SaskTel is well known for, like cellular and broadband services, we also have the expertise and ability to facilitate bigger, turning-point projects with customer focused solutions.”

With a population of over 6,000, Melfort started working with SaskTel last year to explore and research possible solutions for issues facing their community. Stakeholder sessions with city council and local leadership focused on prioritizing community needs and finding the most appropriate and sustainable solutions for local circumstances.

“From the beginning, we have focused on making the lives of residents better by taking a people-first approach,” said Ryan Danberg, City of Melfort City Manager. “This is not just about implementing new technology; it’s about engaging our citizens to create a better quality of life and more prosperous future for Melfort. This project will offer our city and residents lasting benefits, all while showcasing innovative systems and technologies from Saskatchewan.”

Collaborations to date have already proven successful. In addition to putting forward ways to improve local connectivity, SaskTel leveraged their existing relationship with technology partner, Saskatchewan’s Greenwave Innovations to pilot an integrated platform for environmental and resource monitoring in the city.

“Much like SaskTel, we entered into this project to find problem-solving solutions that would offer tangible benefits for the community,” said Dean Clark, President of Greenwave Innovations. “As it turns out, SaskTel’s expertise in connectivity, data storage, and software services were a great match with our knowledge in energy management and conservation.”

As part of the next stages, Melfort and SaskTel are working together on design-thinking exercises to map new ways to improve digital citizen engagement and other aspects of community life. SaskTel also plans to launch LoRaWAN®, their new long-range low power wireless network, locally further enabling an array of Smart City use cases for both the municipality and the community.

This significant collaborative project between the City of Melfort and SaskTel represents an important step in building more connected communities and the development of smart cities 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 1.35 million customer connections including 618,000 wireless accesses, 308,000 wireline network accesses, 276,000 internet accesses and 111,000 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 3,600 full-time equivalent employees (FTEs). Visit SaskTel at www.sasktel.com.

For more information on SaskTel’s approach to Innovation & Collaboration, visit www.sasktel.com/innovation.

About City of Melfort

The City of Melfort is a progressive city nestled in the heart of Saskatchewan’s great north-east, a land dominated by soil rich farmland and a variety of forests, lakes and beaches. With a vibrant population and business community, as well as numerous parks and public facilities, it is rare to see the level of services and amenities that you’ll find in our community. Stay and Play a while and you will find out why we say “We live it! You’ll love it! To learn more, visit www.melfort.ca.

About Greenwave Innovations

Greenwave Innovations is a Saskatchewan-based energy management company providing electricity, natural gas and water sub-monitoring solutions. Our technology accurately identifies the energy efficiency opportunities that produce consumption and carbon emission reduction results. We partner with our clients to implement predictive maintenance strategies, monitor the readiness of safety and emergency systems and reduce the risk of loss and insurance claims. With data in hand, we can properly size renewable energy generation and storage solutions as part of supporting our client’s sustainability initiatives. Greenwave Innovations … your partners in energy conservation. Visit Greenwave Innovations at www.greenwaveinnovations.ca.

For media inquiries, please contact:

• SaskTel Media Relations
• Phone: 306.777.2727
• E-mail: media.relations@sasktel.com

• Dean Clark, President – Greenwave Innovations
• Phone: 306.789.0456
• E-mail: info@greenwaveinnovations.ca

• Ryan Danberg – City of Melfort
• Phone: 306.752.5911
• E-mail: r.danberg@melfort.ca