REGINA - SaskTel has announced a major boost to its infiNET service to 61 more communities in the province by the end of 2027.
The province Crown announced Monday it will be investing an additional $80 million into its Rural Fibre Initiative, expanding advanced fibre optic broadband connectivity to more than 22,000 additional homes and businesses in the province.
The 61 towns will be connected as part of Phase Seven of the Rural Fibre Initiative, which is expected to be complete by the end of 2027.
Once this phase is complete, SaskTel will have expanded its fibre optic broadband network to 193 communities. When the Rural Fibre Initiative is complete, SaskTel will have invested $1 billlion to bring its fibre optic network to 225 communities or nearly 85 per cent of the province.
Already Phases One and Two are complete and Phase Three is 95 per cent done. Phases Four through Six are expected to be fibre ready by the end of 2025. With the additional $80 million for Phase Seven, SaskTel’s overall investment for the Rural Fibre Initiative is now up to $280 million.
The announcement was made at the Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association Convention in Regina on Monday. Minister of Crown Investments Corporation and Minister for SaskTel Dustin Duncan made the announcement and said this will result in Saskatchewan “being one of the most fibre connected provinces in Canada.”
As for what needs to be done to connect the last 15 per cent. Duncan said:
“So SaskTel is looking at what needs to take place in terms of technology that we’d need to pursue to be able to get to that last 15 per cent. As we’ve said in the announcement, this will be a $280 million investment to provide fibre speed to 85 per cent of the population of Saskatchewan. So we need to look at what is next, what technology that we will be looking at next. So we will be having those discussions, exploring the different types of technologies that would be beyond fibre to help bring fibre-like speeds the people in Saskatchewan who would be beyond this 85 per cent. So no decisions at this point, but a lot of work behind the scenes going on as to what that would look like.”
SaskTel President and CEO Charlene Gavel spoke of what it took to get a project like this to fruition.
“It takes a lot of hard work. There’s certainly long-term planning in terms of the network and how that needs to come together to get these fibre speeds out to all the towns, and then once we get into the towns there’s obviously lots of design work and construction work in each town. So it’s a very significant undertaking, and we have lots of teams working really hard to ensure that we are completing this work as soon as possible to get this service to our customers.”
