REGINA — SaskTel announced yesterday it will invest approximately $323 million of capital in Saskatchewan in its 2021-2022 fiscal year and more than $1.4 billion over the next five years.
The Crown corporation’s network and customer service investments this year are on par with its 2020-21 investments of close to $324 million.
The highlights of SaskTel’s fiscal 2021-2022 core Saskatchewan investment program (April 1, 2021 to March 31, 2022) include the following:
$85.8 million for fibre to the x (FTTx) program
This year, SaskTel’s fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) and fibre-to-the-business (FTTB) initiatives, collectively known as FTTx, will expand the infiNET network further outside Saskatchewan’s nine major centres. This expansion comes as SaskTel also accelerates its investments in the FTTB initiative to help more businesses modernize their operations.
Key FTTx investments include, reads the press release:
- $43.5 million — FTTP in the nine major centres
- $18.2 million — FTTP outside of the nine major centres and phase one of the Rural Fibre Initiative
- $24.1 million — FTTB
- In 2021-22, SaskTel’s FTTx program is forecasted to connect approximately 17,320 homes and 1,715 business locations.
$95.9 million for wireless network enhancements
SaskTel’s 4G LTE network provides service to more than 99% of Saskatchewan’s population, and includes more than 1,000 cell sites throughout the province. In 2021-22, SaskTel will further invest in strengthening its wireless network and launching its 5G network.
Key investments:
- $55 million — 4G LTE modernization and initial 5G roll-out: As part of these overall efforts, SaskTel will begin to upgrade its 4G LTE network with the latest Samsung equipment in a phased and targeted manner. A launch of 5G on select towers is planned for late 2021.
- $27.5 million — LTE enhancements
- $7.5 million — Wireless Saskatchewan (final phase)
$75.4 million on several initiatives for wireline network growth and enhancements
- $35 million — access and core demand and growth
- $25 million — network modernization
- $7 million — maxTV growth and service development
- $6 million — customer premise equipment (CPE)
$66.1 million to improve customer services and operations
Investments in information technology and information systems platforms and service enhancements include:
- Enhancements to consumer market self-serve platform as well as initiatives to streamline current consumer market wireline product and bundle offerings
- Business market sales tools evolution to implement improved customer experience initiatives to better serve business market customers
- Information systems infrastructure demand to enable SaskTel’s continued evolution into a world-class information communications technology (ICT) provider
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