REGINA – SaskTel customers are hanging up their landlines and that’s affecting revenue.
The SaskTel annual financial report says revenue from phone service was down $234.2 million for the fiscal year ending in March because customers dropped their existing landline to go wireless.
Long-distance revenue was also down $5.4 million and the report says that’s due to loss of customers to social media, wireless and voice-over-Internet protocol.
But the Crown corporation made more on wireless services and still reported an overall net income of $126.7 million and revenue of $1.6 billion.
The company is looking at ways to stay competitive in the telecommunications industry, in part because a report released last month said the takeover of Manitoba Telecom Services (TSX:MBT) by Bell (TSX:BCE) poses risks to SaskTel.
Among other things, the report said there’s a risk that establishing Winnipeg as a western headquarters for Bell could lead to an erosion of SaskTel’s share of the Saskatchewan business market.
