submitted 3 days ago by TribblesBestFriend@startrek.website to c/canada@lemmy.ca

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Why I didn’t know that sooner ?

Is there any Saskatchewanean (???) in the room that could give me a « on the ground » critic of their services ?

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[-] FlareHeart@lemmy.ca 31 points 3 days ago

I work for SaskTel so make of these statements what you will.

SaskTel is not perfect. We do what we can to ensure good coverage for the people of Saskatchewan at decent prices. Unfortunately the SaskParty has been chipping away at us via underfunding and headcount mandates. This makes it much harder to keep services supported as well as they should be.

SaskTel is under attack. Quietly. Stealthily. All in an attempt to prove that it would be better to sell to private interest. If anyone else is here from SK, please don't vote SaskParty. They are quietly killing our crown corps (SGI, SaskPower, and SaskEnergy too).

[-] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 15 points 3 days ago

I'm not surprised it's being attacked. Conservatives and neoliberals alike are terrified of how successful a model it is. We should be doing Sasktel style companies nationwide, for everything where simply nationalizing it doesn't make more sense. It's proof that there are ways of keeping consumer prices down without getting into the politically fraught territory of price controls. We should all be pushing for more of Sasktel, everywhere.

[-] runsmooth@kopitalk.net 7 points 3 days ago

I sense that these Crown Corps need to evolve to be insulated against basically unregulated politicians. Perhaps there's a more aggressive model where the Crown Corps can become a fully private entity with strict obligations of reporting to the public, and consistent obligations of stakeholder consults. But hard baked restrictions - like the judicial branch - requiring the Corps staff to fully disassociate from political parties: fully recorded communications, no donations, no public support of any political party.

Unleash them with the sole objective of providing a whatever public good they're supposed to, but without the political interference and the risk of politicians being captured by lobbyists.

[-] adespoton@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 days ago

The reason politicians are afraid of crown corps is that the final responsibility for them lies with politicians, and they aren’t designed to be profitable.

Which means every crown corp is leverage against the in-power politicians.

If that could be fixed, they probably wouldn’t hate them so much.

[-] cecilkorik@lemmy.ca 23 points 3 days ago

I lived in Regina for a few years and it's everything a public service should be. We should probably have more public services, and we shouldn't let the government sabotage them on behalf of private interests so that the private sector can pretend they're saving the day. Don't let the private interests and their government lackies scam you. A government is perfectly capable of running an extraordinarily effective public service. The governments we vote for aren't interested in doing that, though.

[-] DerisionConsulting@lemmy.ca 6 points 3 days ago

They're great and cheap, as is Lüm.

Other provinces had similar set-ups in the past, but they've been sold off. Then phone plans got more expensive, and service got worse, in those provinces.

When the point of a corporation is to provide the best service, they aim for that goal.
When the point of a corporation is to extract a profit, they aim for that goal instead.

[-] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 3 points 3 days ago

My town had free dial up, when the switch to cable happened they abandoned it.

[-] Reannlegge@lemmy.ca 13 points 3 days ago

I have lived my life in Saskatchewan, when I see people say how much their bills are I can tell if they are in Saskatchewan or not. Having real competition rocks.

[-] Kelsenellenelvial@lemmy.ca 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Yep. Not sure of it’s still true recently but I know last time I looked up pricing between other carriers the prices in Sask were about $20/month lower than other provinces. Presumably this is due to Sasktel providing real competition and providing real service in rural areas.

Shitty think is they’ve kind of been limited by the Sask Party preventing them from providing services outside Saskatchewan, even if those services were profitable and bringing money into the province.

On the home internet side, Sasktel has always seems to have more consistent service, more upload bandwidth and no bandwidth limits. I even tested out some online backup systems, uploading about 20 TB/month for a few months straight and never heard anything about “excessive” usage. As far as I know they don’t do any kind of traffic monitoring or shaping on their home internet services.

They also have their own MVNO, Lüm Mobile, that can be pretty affordable for most users.

[-] Reannlegge@lemmy.ca 3 points 3 days ago

The first time I heard of download/upload limits was cell phones, I was painfully aware of speeds as i grew up in the 90’s with a 14.4 k modem, but when I heard that people had limits on there download and upload on their home wired connection in the modern day was a surprise. I use several gigs a month, as I am sure many people do but if I take on a new project I do not need to think about the data usage.

A few years ago my modem went out I called Sasktel and they said they would send someone to replace it but they would give me the equivalent of unlimited data on my cell phone (if I was not going to be using gigs a day).