Regional carrier SaskTel is currently celebrating its 25th year of offering cellular service in Saskatchewan. The official anniversary was on August 8th and Ron Styles, SaskTel President and CEO, said the “cellular service and network access has allowed Saskatchewan people to become citizens of our global world. We are very proud to have brought a technology to this province that enriches the social, economic, personal and business opportunities of all residents, and has fundamentally changed the way we live.”
SaskTel’s wireless business started in 1989 with its analog network. The first call kicked off the Jeux Canada Games in Saskatoon. Nine years later, SaskTel’s CDMA network launched in 1998, followed by EVDO in 2005. By 2010, SaskTel announced the rollout of its 3G network and later, in 2012, its 4G HSPA network. In an effort to keep pace with the competition, SaskTel launched LTE (Long Term Evolution) in just one year later.
SaskTel has over 615,000 wireless subscribers and employs over 4,100 in the province of Saskatchewan. The telecom company notes that it has spent more than a billion dollars on the core Saskatchewan network since 1998 and has built a network that serves 98% of the province.
To celebrate the 25-year milestone, SaskTel has created a dedicated website with highlights from the past quarter century. These have all been pleasantly photoshopped with a celebrity from the specific year. Even Bieber made the cut.
Source: SaskTel
