High speed wireless link (with solar infrastructure) evaluation pilot (Qld beef producer: case study)

Summary

Internet and connectivity are one of the biggest issues currently facing the rural and regional communities of Australia. MLA seeks to support industry transition to a data culture with supply chain decisions that are based on data capture and analysis. To achieve this, understanding and defining the connectivity spectrum and value propositions is needed.

A Queensland beef station was used as a pilot study by WI-SKY Queensland to demonstrate how a high-speed wireless link (with solar infrastructure) could work in parallel with the NBN Skymuster satellite.

The pilot demonstrated how this parallel system provides a wider connectivity solution than just Skymuster in isolation. This project has demonstrated that it is possible to build a wireless network to a remote cattle station in a cost-effective and reliable manner.

Objectives

The overall objective of the project was to evaluate and demonstrate how a connectivity system could work in parallel with Skymuster. The pilot demonstrated how this parallel system provides a wider connectivity solution than just Skymuster in isolation.

Key findings

A connectivity solution was installed at a producer station and provided quarterly reporting on:

• data used (when, peak, what used for)
• bandwidth (Aiming for 40mb up and down, can be more)
• speed (max, min, average, ideal) (Latency comparison)
• reliability of link including down time
• benefits of video instead of tank levels etc
• additional value adoption.

This project has demonstrated that it is possible to create a simple, reliable and low-cost wireless link that can deliver significant benefits to regional producers throughout Australia.

Internet connectivity offers many potential benefits for beef businesses (explored in other research) and existing Skymuster services are generally inadequate, however, fixed wireless systems are a cost effective and practical solution to this problem.

Benefits to industry

The benefits from this project for the Queensland beef producer were not only to increase business productivity and communications, but also improve quality of life for staff being able to better access educational, social and health resources. 

The equipment that is now available on the market is able to handle the harsh outback environment and perform admirably.

MLA action

MLA invited the provider (Wi-Sky) to speak at the MLA's Digital Forum (Red Meat 2018 on 23 November 2018), to share these experiences, derived benefits from establishing connectivity and types of business improvement problems that were solved by enhanced connectivity.

Future research

• It is clear from the measurement and monitoring of data usage that it will be challenging to interpret and convert this type of data into business improvement and profitability metrics that can be reported on more broadly.   
• It is expected that customising and re-classifying the "data traffic" categories associated with red meat production over time is a good place to start to derive more useful meaningful data.
• The following initiatives are recommended for future quarterly evaluation testing cycles:
  • collecting more frequent meaningful data to be more statistically relevant
  • input required from MLA's connectivity group to assist with establishing methodology in the future to start to convert data traffic into more meaningful profitability business improvement data.