Sasktel’s 5G network: Planning the future of fast
The communications company will invest $1.4 billion for Saskatchewan residents to fully utilize emerging technologies
When it comes to communication and connectivity, the challenge isn’t to stay current; it’s to look to the future: to plan ahead in order to stay ahead. That’s why Sasktel is investing more than $1.4 billion in capital across Saskatchewan over the next five years to ensure that residents will be able to fully utilize emerging information and entertainment technologies. Simply stated, when fully deployed, 5G will enable your devices to do more, do it better, and do it faster.
Let’s start with fast. The time between information sent and received will drop from 10 to 50 milliseconds to one millisecond. Commercial and agricultural operations will be able to experience applications like automated shipping and field monitoring at a phenomenal 10 gigabits per second. That speed will be enjoyed by more people in more Saskatchewan communities than ever before. According to Jeremy Gabel, Director of Technology at Sasktel, “The increased broadband is one of the key drivers. In Saskatchewan, where we have a greater rural area, it’s going to be an opportunity to deliver fibre-like speeds in the future to where we don’t have our fibre optic or FTTP (fibre to the premises) networks.”
One of the most important advantages will be the ability of our devices and machines – in our businesses, in the city or on the farm – to communicate directly with each other: the Internet of Things (IOT). For example, a soil moisture sensor could tell an irrigation system when to turn on and off throughout an entire season, without any human intervention. Currently, we’re connected to more than five billion devices worldwide. With 5G, that number is expected to quickly reach 50 to 100 billion devices.
The IOT is especially dependent on a reduction in latency – how much time it takes for a signal to travel to its destination and back. That reduction is critical to the future operation of driverless vehicles and other time-sensitive devices that need to “talk” to each other in real time, in order to function effectively and safely. It is equally important to the operation of businesses, where IOT allows monitoring and pulling insights from devices and machines, to make immediate decisions and increase productivity.
The benefits to the people of Saskatchewan go far beyond greater efficiencies. Upgrading to a 5G network will eventually create a whole new world of how we run our factories, operate our farms,
educate students, deliver health care, and improve our economy and quality of life overall. In its report, The importance of 5G and the digital economy in Western Canada, Price Waterhouse Coopers LLP Canada estimates that advancements in agri-tech, smart cities, virtual healthcare, Internet of Things (IOT) solutions, virtual reality and many other innovations – all made possible by 5G – “could help to increase Western Canadian GDP by $34 billion annually by 2035.” Investing in 5G development now will help secure Saskatchewan’s participation in that prosperity.
For now, the work continues. By the end of 2022, 5G will cover 50 per cent of Saskatchewan’s population. Meeting the challenge to connect even more residents, especially in rural and remote areas, is significant but essential. It’s a challenge welcomed by people like Peter Dang, a senior planner in Sasktel’s technology division: “For me as a network planner, I’m very interested in how 5G technologies will drive and shape not only digital adoption in our individual lives, but the digital transformation across society. I’m very eager to see people’s willingness to adopt wireless connectivity beyond the smartphones that we all have in our hands today. When I think about what “things” would be enhanced if they were connected, the possibilities are potentially endless. From smart cities, to smart farms, and everything in between, there is certainly no shortage of assets to be tracked, environments to be monitored, and data that can be produced that give us more insight, more efficiencies, and more productivity. It’s certainly a mindset change of “should it be connected?” to “why isn’t it connected?”
In the words of Don Morgan, Minister Responsible for Sasktel, “Sasktel’s 5G network will be a foundational component to Saskatchewan’s economic growth, as it will help to drive innovation across every major industry while also enhancing our ability to connect to one another.”
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