SaskTel prepares seven-year FTTP, 4G project

Canada’s SaskTel this week announced it is embarking on a seven-year, $670 million fiber-to-the-premises project and 4G wireless upgrade aimed at the nine-largest markets in the Saskatchewan province. The news from the Canadian independent telco came as at least three of its indie brethren in the U.S. announced vendor selections on their own broadband projects.

The network build, which will kick off with $199 million this year alone, will be targeted at both residential and business customers in the cities of Saskatoon, Regina, Moose Jaw, Weyburn, Estevan, Swift Current, Yorkton, North Battleford and Prince Albert.

The company said the wireline portion of its investment for 2011 will total about $16 million for DSL sustainment and new FTTP deployment. Regina and Saskatoon are expected to begin receiving FTTP-based services by the end of the year. SaskTel also will spend about $52 million this year on expanding its 4G wireless network, and among other investments, an additional $27 million on a rural broadband program.

On the U.S. indie telco front this week:
-- Eastex Telephone Cooperative in Texas selected Adtran’s Total Access Multi-Services Access and Aggregation platform to serve 30,000 broadband customers in 11 counties in Eastern Texas.

-- Doylestown Telephone Company in Ohio picked Zhone Technologies to supply its MXK multi-service access platform for a combined GPON and ADSL network architecture serving about 4,000 customers.

-- Atlantic Telephone Membership Corporation (ATMC), a telephone cooperative in North Carolina, has chosen Calix to provide its Calix E7 GPON gear. The deal is the vendor’s latest in a long string of broadband stimulus wins. ATMC has about $16 million in total funds it is putting toward broadband services for about 9,000 residences.