In a collaboration between SaskTel and SaskPower, plans were laid to install approximately 190 km of fiber optic cable from North Battleford to Meadow Lake. Both utilities would benefit enormously from this project, gaining:

• Reliability through geographic redundancy
• Reduced capital and O&M costs through cost sharing
• Connection of two previously unnetworked power stations
• Connection of numerous customers and collaborative agencies

To realize these benefits, the TeleControl team evenly shared the scope on a four-person rotation. We were collectively responsible for pre-testing the reels of fiber optics before installation, splicing the fiber along the route, tapping into the existing line with live traffic, and terminating the fiber optics in the station with an all-dielectric final link to isolate the station ground grid from the main fiber optic line. The TeleControl team collaborated closely with an excellent plough crew to overcome the many challenges that naturally arise with such an extensive route, including:

• Directional drilling and jetting cable through three towns
• Navigating numerous railway, highway, phone, gas, and environmental crossings
• Managing several cable pulls ranging from 200 m to 1,000 m
• Completing approximately 50 splice points
• Coordinating between the engineering and field teams of two utilities with inherently different network topologies
• Coordinating the installation of nodes and the salvage of the obsolete RF network
• Safety – holding transmission standoff permits, and obtaining distribution standoffs from local authority when ploughing underneath powerlines