SaskTel International Consulting Inc. will be expanding into an area of the world that really needs its expertise.
The SaskTel subsidiary has signed an agreement Datec Group Ltd., a foreign services firm, to offer telecom services to countries in the Australasia and South Pacific regions. Datec already offers IT services to organizations in the area.
Headquartered in Regina, Saskatchewan, SaskTel International, provides engineering consulting, project management, and software solutions around the world.
Its partnership with Datec has been forged to explore and develop telecommunications opportunities globally. It will initially focus on the Asia Pacific region to support existing Datec interests, including those in Papua New Guinea, the two firms said in a statement.
Deals such as this one with Datec give the western telco “an opportunity to look at other opportunities,” outside Canada, a SaskTel International spokesperson told ITWorldCanada.
Casey O’Byrne, chairman of Datec Group, said SaskTel’s expertise in setting up telecom infrastructures in rural environments was a key factor in Datec’s desire to partner. ”In Papua New Guinea…they (Datec) have a two per cent phone penetration rate,” he said. “If there are phones but no roads, the roads will follow. [A telecom infrastructure] will change the country.”
SaskTel International was formed in 1986 in an effort to apply technology developed for use in the western province to other worldwide markets. Some key areas of expertise the SaskTel subsidiary has focused on include fibre optics, microwave radio, cellular and trunked mobile radio, wireless and traditional access networks, advanced interactive and Internet services.
Some notable SaskTel International deployments include the telecommunications system in the England-France underwater Channel Tunnel, or “Chunnel, and 1,500 kilometres of fibre optics in the South China Sea. In addition to its main location in Regina, the company has a regional office in Tanzania.