REGINA – SaskTel and Huawei are part of partnership that will bring cellular service for the first time to the communities of Wollaston Lake, Stony Rapids, Fond du Lac First Nation and Black Lake First Nation in Saskatchewan.
This partnership is based on SaskTel’s Community Participation Model, which encourages communities to raise funds to cover the shortfall when it is not economically feasible for the provincial telco to finance a new cellular site alone.
SaskTel’s economic analysis for this $5.8 million project covering these four communities, which took into account the overall cost of the tower sites, operating expenses over the first five years, and the anticipated revenues, resulted in a shortfall of $634,000. Athabasca Basin Development provided $249,000 and Huawei contributed $385,000 in funding.
“SaskTel customers experience a level of connectivity that is rare in other sparsely populated parts of the world. We are committed to connecting our rural and northern communities,” said SaskTel president and CEO Ron Styles, in Monday’s announcement. “Our Community Participation Model makes it possible for smaller communities to have access to our world-class wireless network.”
“We are extremely pleased to be supporting SaskTel and Athabasca Basin Development in this initiative” added Huawei Canada President Sean Yang. “This is the single largest contribution we’ve made to connect rural and northern Canadians, and reflects our commitment to ensure residents and business across the Province of Saskatchewan have access to innovative technologies”.
SaskTel said that it expects that the cellular service will be in place by 2015.
