Late last year I wrote an article on e-agriculture activities based on my trip into outback Queensland Agriculture ICT and travelling in Outback Queensland.
I received this follow up from Tom Andrews from Connected Farms.
I recall that last October you did an excellent article about the importance of connectivity for the Australian farming sector and how the saleyards at Roma needed improved connectivity so I just thought I would let you know about a project Connected Farms has been successful in getting co-funding for through the Regional Connectivity Program: – I am delighted to confirm that Connected Farms have secured funding through the Australian Government’s Regional Connectivity Program for our Roma Datacentre and Regional Fixed Wireless network project.
Connected Farms as a Licenced Telecommunications Carrier and Retail Service Provider (RSP), will deliver a fixed wireless solution with fibre backhaul to provide coverage for high speed internet connectivity to the farming community, businesses, residents in the areas surrounding Roma that are outside the NBN fixed line footprint This will provide a significant increase in digital speeds for the farm offices, other local businesses along with surrounding agricultural and residential properties.
The small local edge data centre is proposed to deal with the expected increase in the adoption of ag-tech which the improved connectivity will enable over surrounding farms and in general use for local businesses. The project will deal with the growing data needs of the Roma saleyards as they develop more on-line auction processes that use high quality visual imaging data. Customers of the saleyards will also be able to meet the demands of the growing provenance tracking needs.
The project will facilitate the increase adoption of digital agriculture in the region and support a vast number of other businesses. For the local communities, the ease of access to video calling and other platforms such using VPN’s and entertainment downloads will likely be enhanced by this project.