Article content continued

None of the major telecoms has approached SaskTel with similar acquisition offers, Styles said. Still, he said the MTS deal could impact SaskTel’s operations in the short term – it has roaming and reciprocity agreements with both MTS and Bell – and make Bell an even tougher competitor in the long term.

“They’re essentially right on our doorstep,” Styles said. “That’s not new… but they’re going to be closer, they’re going to be larger and they’re going to have larger economies of scale.”

SaskTel expects to hire a consultant this week and release the risk analysis to the public by the third week of June.

Gerry Wall, president of Wall Communications, called the risk assessment a smart idea for a company that needs to take stock of whether it can continue its low wireless prices if it wants to make capital investments to compete with larger players.

MTS and SaskTel’s low wireless prices are an anomaly in Canada, but MTS got out of the game when it couldn’t compete with capital investments by Bell, Telus or Rogers, Wall said. Any of those players would “absolutely” be interested in buying SaskTel, which he estimated would fetch north of $2 billion, but he said political hurdles make that an unlikely short-term outcome no matter what the risk analysis concludes. (Premier Wall promised not to privatize the company without a referendum.)