‘It’s going to be great:’ SaskTel expanding broadband service to 48 more communities

By Jaryn Vecchio

Thousands of people across Saskatchewan will soon get better Internet.

SaskTel announced he sixth phase of its Rural Fibre Initiative on Wednesday, which will see 48 more communities get access to the company’s infiNET network. Over 80 other communities were included in the $200 million project’s first five phases.

Communities included in Phase 6 of SaskTel’s Rural Fibre Initiative. (SaskTel)

“I think it’s going to be great for everybody,” said Lawrence Weinrauch, Turtleford’s Mayor. “Just the connectivity for people, everyone is online now.”

SaskTel said its network delivers Internet speeds reaching close to a gigabit per second. Weinrauch noted slow speed is one of the major issues his community has.

“Some businesses have had to go to two separate routers,” he said. “I manage the Co-op, and we’ve had to split between SaskTel and Access just to get our speed up.”

Lauriel Magnusson, the deputy mayor for the Town of Duck Lake, said she was excited to see if SaskTel’s network will help fix connectivity problems.

She said it really became an issue during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many were asked to work from home. Due to poor Internet, Magnusson had trouble doing video calls as the connection would just buffer.

“Quite often I get the stuttering and stopping, and I joke that everyone sounds like a robot,” she said.

While there’s no exact date on when construction will start, SaskTel said it’s confident it will start sometime in either 2023 or 2024. The plan is to have its network available to all of the communities included in this initiative by March of 2025.

Once the project is completed, SaskTel said the network will reach around 80 per cent of all households in the province.