Five Saskatchewan communities are now able to access better internet and TV services after some upgrades made by SaskTel recently.

On Thursday last week, the crown corporation announced that interNet Extended 25 and 50 along with maxTV Stream are now available in Abbey, Eastend, Gull Lake, Prelate, and Sceptre.

These recent upgrades are part of a larger project SaskTel has been working on since 2015 when the CRTC made its mandate for all Canadian residents to have internet access to download speeds of up to 50 Mbps and upload speeds of up to 10 Mbps.

"For this type of upgrade we have to upgrade the electronics in our network either in the community itself or in what we would call our central office that's close to that community," Greg Jacob, an external communications manager with SaskTel, said. "Once those upgrades are made then there's some smaller electronic upgrades that need to be made in pedestals throughout the communities but it's very minor."

The southwest region is one of the last area's SaskTel has made these improvements as they just recently upgraded the backhaul capacity to enable the enhanced services.

"In more recent months, we've been focused quite a bit in southwest Saskatchewan," he said. "In the last six to eight months we've actually upgraded the broadband speeds in about 30 to 35 communities in southwest Saskatchewan and these latest communities add to that list.

According to Jacob, the strong majority of internet upgrades in southwest communities are now done but he expects the odd straggler (village or town) to be done over the course of the year.

Over 350 communities in Saskatchewan now have the broadband speeds the CRTC was hoping for and over 390 communities have the maxTV Stream option too.