Digital ag: ‘Salt and pepper’ mobile coverage holding farmers back, report finds

Some farmers are still having to go to extreme lengths just to access the internet on the farm, but a new report has proposed some solutions to the problem.

Salt and pepper connectivity is holding farmers back from realising their businesses’ full potential.

Farmers and their regional communities should have a greater say in telecommunications planning, while all levels of government have been warned they need to co-operate more if they want to ensure they don’t hold back the bush.

Patchy coverage, or ‘salt and pepper’ mobile connectivity, is still stopping agriculture and online farm-based businesses from reaching their full potential, a new report by the Australian Broadband Advisory Council has found – and it could cost the industry its goal of reaching $100 billion production value by 2030.

The report, by the council’s agri-tech expert working group and released this month, found inconsistent, unreliable and ‘thin’ coverage meant farmers were still unable to take full advantage of the suite of digital ag tools available to them.

“Salt and pepper connectivity is holding back online business and administrative functions, the full use of digital functionality on existing equipment, the use of digital technologies that need reliable and ubiquitous connectivity and is forcing costly offline workarounds for farmers,” the report stated.

A key issue continues to be the 14-kilometre boundary for accessing fixed wireless services rather than satellite, with many farmers coming up with “quite ingenious but not ideal DIY solutions”.

In one example, a farmer put a shipping container with a mailbox on the part of their farm within the 14km line, and installed equipment to retransmit NBN signals to the other farm houses.

In another case study, a cotton farmer couldn’t use his full suite of irrigation monitoring equipment due to patchy coverage, despite being within the line of sight of a Telstra mobile tower.

The report said the issue also affected regions’ economic growth, with people unable to operate their farm or home-based businesses online without travelling into town to access Wi-Fi, while children were unable to access remote learning.

The report recommended NBN Co start moving people on the outskirts of the 14km off satellite and onto fixed wireless, and that it and other carriers should explore ways it could work with third party providers to extend their networks.

It also called on governments to have “stronger co-ordination” of their communications investment, which should be more aligned with regional communities’ individual needs.

Federal Communications Minister Paul Fletcher said the government would examine the report closely to identify its next steps.