SaskTel, the main telco in Saskatchewan, Canada, on Thursday formally launched its Fiber to the Premises (FTTP) service under its 'infiNET' banner.
Consumers and businesses that sign up for the service will be able to access data speeds of up to 200/60 Mbps, the announcement said.
The FTTP service launch is part of an ambitious $800 million investment program the telco unveiled last April. Under that plan, the service provider will deploy FTTP in nine of the largest urban centers of SaskTel's home province--Saskatoon, Regina, Moose Jaw, Weyburn, Estevan, Swift Current, Yorkton, North Battleford and Prince Albert--by 2017.
Initially, the service will be offered in "selected areas" of Regina and Saskatoon, with plans to pass over 40,000 homes with FTTP by year's end.
An obvious benefit of the FTTP service will be more bandwidth to support the ever-growing appetite for video services. With the new FTTP service, existing Max video customers, SaskTel said users will be able add up to seven High Definition set top boxes in one home, for example.
Complementing its FTTP efforts SaskTel will invest CAD 28 million (USD 29.2 million) in its Rural Infrastructure Program, which includes CAD 15.6 million (USD 16.3 million) to upgrade 220 basic DSL communities from 1.5 Mbps to 5 Mbps by the end of the year, and another CAD 12.5 million (USD 13 million) to improve its existing wireless network. Since March 2010, SaskTel has upgraded 209 communities with the higher DSL speeds.
For more:
- see the release
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