Friday, March 29, 2024

Rural internet competition heats up

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Competitiveness in New Zealand’s rural broadband market is likely to ramp up in coming months, with the arrival of new providers and expanded satellite capacity in the country.
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 Kacific, Connected Farms and Elon Musk’s Starlink network are building their rural customer base within NZ, either as satellite sources or internet providers.

The Starlink system is targeting NZ coverage by mid-to-late this year, with limited availability.

The company’s website states it is currently operating at only “beta” stage, with brief periods of limited or no connectivity in the early stages of launch.

The company has launched thousands of LEOs or Low Earth Orbit satellites that communicate with ground station antennas to provide internet service to customers with the appropriate hardware.

Issues around latency and signal delay are claimed to be reduced, thanks to the satellites being 60 times closer to Earth than larger traditional satellites.

The company is promising data speeds ranging from 50Mb/s to 150Mb/s, rivalling the fixed fibre networks in the ultrafast broadband network.

In the meantime, Connected Farms has conducted tests in the NZ market near Fairlie, South Canterbury, and based on success, is aiming firmly at the rural market.

The company is offering mobile-like coverage over the farm or “fence-to-fence” wireless connectivity. This is utilising WiFi and private Long-Term Evolution (LTE) technology, similar to 4G technology, with the ability to transmit at higher speeds than standard WiFi tech.

Tom Andrews | March 03, 2021 from GlobalHQ on Vimeo.

For farmers struggling with cellphone coverage, the Connected Farms tech may provide a connectivity option, while connecting farm devices to the internet can be achieved using the company’s long-range, low-power wide-area network (LPWAN), suitable for wide farm areas.

The Australian-based company is pushing into systems that enable farmers to use their cellphones in areas with poor coverage to receive calls via the internet.

Signal ability can also be boosted by turning the farm ute into a repeater-like station, providing a “bubble” of coverage for calls in remote areas, as long as the ute is nearby.

“The regulatory regime in NZ does not limit you using such a network, it is a straightforward process, there are only issues with regulations if you use high power transmitters,” chief executive and founder Tom Andrews said.

He says topography in NZ does offer its challenges, but the company was using powerful direction antennas that can direct a signal to a specific area in geographically-challenged districts.

Another piece of tech Connected Farms was bringing later in the year were “site edge” or micro data server centres, often located near farms.

Unlike much more remote cloud data centres, the smaller local bespoke data centres provide a low-cost, local storage source for regularly collected farm data.

“With increasing dairy automation, the use of drones and self-driving tractors, for example, we see the demand and the amount of data only increasing and the centres are a cost effective means of managing that data,” he said.

The third company on the market, Kacific, is an Asia-Pacific company that launched its first satellite in 2019 and began transmitting in March last year.

It is looking to increase its penetration through the region via internet service providers, including Connected Farms.

Kacific chief executive Christian Patouraux says the company’s satellite technology represents the most advanced in the Asia-Pacific region, with download speeds of up to 50Mb/s, capable of high-quality video calls and video streaming.

“While NZ is amazingly advanced already with its connectivity, there are still about 100,000 people who are poorly connected who simply won’t be reached via fibre. It is good to have satellite coverage in the mix, offering a service to the last few percent,” Patouraux said.

Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISPA) NZ spokesperson Ernie Newman says satellite offerings were a growing part of the market, of which WISPA has three affiliated companies working with it.

While lag can be a concern for some applications, Newman says satellite operators provide a valued service in areas struggling for alternative signal coverage.

“And it seems these new operators are putting their toes in the water to see what the market here is like,” Newman said.

However, he says technical challenges can remain in getting a signal from a household router to wider farm coverage, “and of course, cost will be a factor in any service”.

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