Premier Brad Wall is floating the idea of selling SaskTel, seemingly as a tactic to see if anyone would actually like the idea. By referencing the idea of selling it enough, he will get an idea of the reaction people might have if SaskTel were to be put up for sale, and whether or not it would be good or bad for the Saskatchewan Party’s chances at re-election. As a result, it’s somewhat important to give him the reactions he craves, because that’s the only way to get the result we want.
Here’s my reaction: Selling SaskTel is not something which will benefit the people of Saskatchewan.
The reason comes down to the slightly odd position which SaskTel lives in as a service provider. As a crown corporation, it has to do a lot of things a private corporation wouldn’t, or even couldn’t, because it has to be accountable to everyone in the province. That means it has to at least attempt to serve everyone here, even if that means doing things that are not going to make much money. For example, take how they have a fairly extensive cell phone network, which they proudly proclaim is the most extensive in the province. It exists because they have to do this, because they’re accountable to the people of the province. It’s not extremely profitable to put a cell phone tower in a tiny town with maybe 300 potential customers, but it’s something SaskTel has to do because it’s their job. They also make money doing this, it’s a profitable company, but a lot of the things they do are not going to be easy to justify on a balance sheet.
They also aren’t cutting corners the way that other internet service providers like to do. For home internet, Saskatchewan does not have caps on the amount of bandwidth someone uses, you’re only limited by the speed of your connection, something which stands in stark contrast to a the majority of the private ISPs in the country. This is slightly important if, for example, you watch video streaming services like Netflix or purchase any videogames digitally on services like Steam – the largest game I own is 50 gigabytes to download – which could send you sailing over a bandwidth cap relatively easily, especially if it’s something modest like 200 GB. As more people resort to streaming for their entertainment, it’s important to remember that there’s a reason why we don’t have to worry about bandwidth caps in this province for the most part, and that reason is SaskTel doesn’t do them. If it was fully private, it likely would, look at everywhere else in the country.
SaskTel does have data limits on mobile internet plans, everybody does, but it also has an unlimited option, which is otherwise rare – though you do get limited speed over a certain amount of bandwidth – and there is another side effect to the way SaskTel operates their data plans. It makes other cell phone providers alter their pricing to stay competitive. I actually don’t use SaskTel as my mobile provider, but I still get benefits from their pricing structure. In order to compete, my provider has a Saskatchewan-only cell phone plan which is significantly cheaper than offerings that exist in other provinces for the same amount of service. That plan exists because otherwise the provider would not be competitive.
Which is not to say SaskTel is perfect, because it isn’t, or that it’s the best option for every consumer on every service. But that’s not the point, even if you don’t use SaskTel you see some benefits from their existence, and operating a telephone service as a crown corporation has clear benefits for consumers that going private will not. And we have clear examples of this in every other province in the country, Ontario pays a lot more for cell phone and internet service than we do, because they don’t have anyone as the equivalent of SaskTel.
For years, Saskatchewan and Manitoba have been touted as the best places in the country for mobile plans, though Manitoba might not last as MTS was just sold privately. We are cheaper than everyone else, because we had crown corporations that were holding the line on prices and keeping things low for everyone. If SaskTel goes the way of MTS, so too will that advantage. It’ll be more expensive to do business here, more expensive to entertain ourselves, more expensive to call our friends, more expensive to live. Instead of selling off the company, SaskTel should be used as a competitive advantage. Cheap bandwidth can be used to sell Saskatchewan as a great place for tech startups, and if we want to keep diversifying the economy giving companies reasons to locate their businesses here is a way to do it. SaskTel can be used to build the economy because nobody else handles internet like they do.
The short version is that selling SaskTel is a bad idea, and hopefully any government dumb enough to do it would find themselves ousted in the next election.
