July 5, 2011 – SaskTel, a full-service communications provider in Saskatchewan, has selected Alcatel-Lucent as the primary infrastructure provider to help implement its recently announced Fiber to the Premises Program, it said. SaskTel describes the program as expanding its broadband capacity in “anticipation of increased customer demand for advanced services, such as bandwidth-hungry video applications.”

“Based on Alcatel-Lucent’s scalable, intelligent and efficient High Leverage Network (HLN) architecture, SaskTel will deploy a single, fully converged, end-to-end IP network for its wireless and wireline business and residential services,” said the communications provider.

The converged network will be built using a range of Alcatel-Lucent next generation wireline, IP and optical products. Once complete, according to SaskTel, the converged network would allow it to increase its service footprint while improving operational efficiency, reliability and performance and reduce costs and complexity.

The Alcatel-Lucent 5780 Dynamic Services Controller (DSC) has also been selected as a “key service-enabling technology” for the converged network.

“As evidenced by our 2011 network investment plans, SaskTel is committed to being the best at connecting people to their world by providing the best customer experience through our superior networks, exceptional service, advanced solutions and applications,” said Ron Styles, SaskTel president and CEO.

“We chose Alcatel-Lucent’s High Leverage Network architecture because it enables us to deliver a full range of differentiated services enabled by the latest innovations in wireline broadband access, IP and optical technologies,” he continued.

In addition to the 5780 DSC, Alcatel-Lucent’s HLN deployment includes Alcatel-Lucent’s:

• 1830 Photonic Service Switch (PSS) for optimized network flexibility and bandwidth provisioning;
• 7750 Service Router (SR) with Enhanced Subscriber Management (ESM) and IPv6 capability;
• 5620 Service Aware Manager (SAM) for end to end network management including photonic management integration; and
• GPON-based 7342 Intelligent Services Access Manager Fiber-to-the-User (ISAM FTTU) to provide ultra high-speed triple-play services (voice, video and data) over a single fiber.

“SaskTel has a history of and continues not only to be a leader in innovation, but a longstanding valued customer of Alcatel-Lucent,” said Alex Giosa, president of Alcatel-Lucent Canada. “By deploying our complete HLN offering, from access to IP to optical, SaskTel will enjoy increased operational efficiency of an end-to-end solutions architecture while delivering broadband services that make money.”

The company has also announced it will invest approximately $670 million in a seven-year Next Generation Broadband Access Program from 2011 to 2017, which it said would upgrade the broadband network in the nine largest urban centers in the province.