14 DAY TRIAL // President and CEO of Canada’s SaskTel, Robert Watson, has announced that the carrier is building its own 3G network now, adding that, when it’s up and running in July, “[Apple] is coming out with a new version of the iPhone […] and they’re going to put us on that.”
SaskTel provides wireless services for the one million residents of Saskatchewan, a prairie province in Canada, which has an area of 588,276.09 square kilometers. According to 2009 estimates, most of the province’s population lives in the southern half. Of these, 233,923 live in the province's largest city, Saskatoon, while 194,971 live in the provincial capital, Regina.
According to a report by Canadian paper Leader-Post, Watson’s exact words in a Wednesday interview were, “We're building the 3G network right now. It will be up and running for July 1st (with) completion by the end of this year.” The report outlines that iPhone users in the territory can rely on Rogers to get a 3G signal. Starting with July 2010, SaskTel customers will benefit from the same services, according to the company’s president. “The good news is that (Apple) is coming out with a new version of the iPhone in the June time-frame and they're going to put us on that. So we're quite excited about that,” his statement reads.
Still, Watson is actually most proud of the coverage SaskTel's new network will be able to provide, the same Leader-Post report informs. The CEO reportedly said that, “It will probably be the best geographic network in the world, with the size and the population that we'll cover. (With Saskatchewan having) the geographical size of Texas and we only have a million people, we'll have a 3G network that will cover 98 per cent of the population.” He explained that, “One of the reasons we are a bit late in getting the network up and running is that we didn't want to start building the network until we had full partnership agreements in place with Telus and Bell.”
Softpedia note
Apple generally dislikes partners shooting their mouths off about future product releases, as the company goes to great lengths to protect information. The statements that Watson released like a flock of doves on Wednesday may actually hurt SaskTel’s chances of carrying the iPhone starting this summer.