Other areas of the province might take cell service for granted, but that’s not so in Wollaston Lake and Fond Du Lac First Nation.
On Thursday, brand new cell towers in the two northern Saskatchewan communities took them from “little to no cellular service” to fully functioning with SaskTel’s wireless service, said Darryl McDonald, CEO for Fond Du Lac First Nation in a SaskTel news release.
SaskTel had previously stated it might not be economically feasible to put up cell towers in areas like this in the province, and asked communities to raise funds to help get infrastructure installed.
The process started prior to November of 2013, where Wollaston Lake and Fond du Lac First Nation were announced as the first two communities to receive service from SaskTel’s Community Participation Model.
Communication is critical when issues pop up for those traveling on Wollaston’s ice road in winter, said Hatchet Lake Chief Bart Tsannie.
“A lot of times incidents happen between where the road is on the other side and to the community,” he said.
Cell reception isn’t completely lacking, but it’s spotty because the nearest cell tower is in Rabbit Lake, which Tsannie said is about 50 kilometres away.
With emergencies that happen during travel – whether it’s by ferry, plane, or ice road – reception can be life or death.
“We have some people, you know, got stranded on the other end and people have got lost on the lake, and we’ve had some fatalities,” he said.
“It’s not like it was in the old days,” Tsannie said of new technology. “It’s really good because the communication needs to be there for the people and it’s really good for the community here.”
The cost of the $6 million partnership was shared between SaskTel, Athabasca Basin Development Corporation, and Huawai Canada; with SaskTel taking on more than $5 million of that.
Athabasca Basin Development provided $249,000 and Huawei contributed $385,000 in funding and telecommunications equipment for the project.
SaskTel says that same partnership will see Black Lake and Stony Rapids up and running with new towers by the end of this year.
SaskTel is “also working on extending and increasing broadband Internet speeds to an additional 26 northern communities” with support from the Connecting Canadians Program, said Minister Responsible for SaskTel, Jim Reiter, in a news release.