SaskTel announced yesterday its recent expansion of its 5G network to nearly 100 rural communities, including Arcola, Carlyle, Fillmore, Manor, and Moose Mountain Provincial Park.
External Communications Manager for SaskTel, Greg Jacobs, explains this is part of an ongoing effort to upgrade their entire wireless network to 5G.
“We first started launching our 5G network back in late 2021 and we've been picking away at it since then and you know we've made very strong progress. Today we have over 700 of our cell sites across the province upgraded to 5G, so we still have about another 300 to go before the project will run its conclusion.”
The process of making the upgrade can vary tower-by-tower. Jacobs explains it's a matter of installing the appropriate equipment, which can mean more extensive upgrades if the entire structure needs to be replaced to accommodate the equipment.
Jacobs says access to the network in these communities means both faster connectivity and greater capacity to keep up with changing technologies.
“Really the exciting stuff with 5G for us is that today we can offer significantly faster data speeds making your wireless connection smoother if you're accessing data, whether that's streaming video or on a FaceTime call or just scrolling websites on your phone. But then also with 5G that network has significantly more capacity to handle connections than past generations of that technology.”
Jacobs continues noting that in turn, technologies will adopt 5G as well, opening the door for more modernization and technology development. He compares it to the evolution of doorbells.
“Years ago, it's a very simple piece of technology, you press the button it chimes in the house and that's it. In today's world you can have a video doorbell or a smart doorbell that can contact you anywhere in the world to let you know that somebody's at your front door. 5G is really that type of connectivity that will help those types of technologies evolve and advance and gain new capabilities that wouldn't have been possible with previous technologies.”
He comments on the project not leaving rural communities behind, noting that these communities are currently leading the 5G upgrades.
“The majority of our cell sites are actually in rural parts of the province and in smaller communities and the way things fit today, we have more 5G cell sites in rural Saskatchewan than we do in the major urban centres.”