If you understand the difference between 5G low and high band, fixed wireless, repeaters and extenders, then you don’t have to read this.
While the tech savvy know their way around digital connectivity, the vast majority of us are staggering around in the dark when it comes to getting information on how to get a couple of extra signal bars on our mobile phones or stop the download lag on our broadband.
Most of the available information put out by the likes of Telstra, Optus, NBN, DPIRD or the myriad of resellers is more marketing spin and glossy pictures than listing the simple step by step options of how to speed things up or get a better signal.
Even the recently released federally funded ‘On Farm Connectivity Guide’ is largely useless unless you want to read four pages of definitions.
So, I thought I might have a crack of summarising what’s available.
Cel-FiGo
First things first, if you are still operating in the Dark Ages without a booster jammed under the seat of your car, ute or header then, as Molly on Countdown used to say, ‘do yourself a favour’.
You can’t bitch about Telstra or Optus or Vodaphone and their networks if you don’t use a booster.
At $900 they are cheaper than half the latest iPhones and when connected to the right antenna do add a bar or two to your signal strength (not that the bars are a good reflection of signal strength).
3G, 4G, 5G
3G is being progressively shut down and will be all gone within two years, 4G is being expanded to fill some of the gaps which is good as its 3 – 6 times faster, but the new 5G low band is also being rolled out to take over the 3G 800 Mhz frequency.
5G low band is not the super fast 5G high band that they are rolling out in the CBD (and which only goes 500m). Rather, it’s a thing called inter-band, non-contiguous, sub-6GHz carrier aggregation, which reuses the 850Mhz to get greater coverage and bandwidth but in reality it’s not much different to 4G; maybe 20 per cent on speed but with potentially 3G range of 8okm in ideal conditions.
The good old 3G worked a treat because it’s primarily a voice network that travels easily through walls and travelled up to 80km from the tower, but it’s slow to carry data, and today connectivity is all about data.
By repurposing the 3G to 5G low band and expanding 4G, most of us will be better off. Though be aware if you have any special farm monitors that tap the mobile network and make sure they can pick up 5G.
What the shutdown of 3G means for coverage on your farm is the luck of the draw, but then we have all complained about the shutdown of CDMA and we survived.
One thing to bear in mind is utilising both the Optus and Telstra networks. Optus is continuing to build more towers in the bush. If part of your farm gets better Optus reception, then think about buying a dual sim card phone, putting in two cel-figos and working off both networks.
Federal Government Mobile Black Spots
Telstra is not Telecom and there is no universal obligation to provide coverage across your whole farm, but they do have to provide you with a fixed phone, which may be a satellite phone for your station if you really are out in the sticks.
If you have a booster and you still can’t get a signal, then send all your complaints to the State and Federal Governments. It’s their responsibility to find the money to build more towers to fill black spots, not Telstra’s or Optus’s or Vodafone’s.
To date, Rounds 1 to 5A have delivered 1270 towers for $875m of Federal funding with another $400m committed by the Albanese Government for improved coverage along regional highways.
That’s under $1b from the $4000b the feds have spent in the last decade on all government outlays. I will leave you to work out if you agree with me that it’s probably one of the best values for money infrastructure programs this country has ever rolled out and maybe we need to keep it going with the aim of doubling the number of regional towers by 2030 to 3000. Note to Federal Liberals and Nats – here is an election policy idea for you.
The next $400m is good news for those who live near a major regional highway, as they might luck it in with a new tower in the next four years, but be aware there are a lot of highways around Australia in hilly areas which need lots of towers to make a difference. Not so good for those who live on the empty flat lands far from a major highway.
Also, as fast as they build new towers, farm data usage plus the kids on TikTok and Netflix hoovers up new capacity, so we probably need to be doubling the number of towers just to maintain current speeds.
WA Government Regional Digital Connectivity Program
There is no great news on the mobile front as far as the WA Government kicking in, as the recently retired WA Minister for Regional Development did not like the big corporate carriers, preferring to back small start ups that promise the world but lack the capital and technology to make a big difference.
This has seen a disastrous misallocation of State Government funds with limited connectivity for the dollars spent over the past three rounds of grants.
The latest WA grant is $43m of which around $30m is yet to be allocated; $30m would build another 60 towers across the bush or run fibre underground through country towns or build a fixed wireless tower which would also benefit the surrounding farms.
The new Minister needs to review this project and start again.
Mobile broadband
If you are lucky to have a couple of bars on your phone when wandering around the farmhouse and don’t mind paying extra for a big data contract, then think about sticking up a 5-10m pole and antenna and plugging in the various boxes that will allow you to live stream Netflix.
Start with a new tuned-to-site Yagi antenna ($200), new cables ($50), a stationary repeater ($800), a dongle data box ($100 per month), an indoor-outdoor signal booster/extender for the house ($100), a repeater antenna ($200) and a second indoor outdoor booster for the sheds ($100). Or package Telstra GO G41 Yagi and Panel Antenna bundle ($2232).
Then you will be maximising what you can get out of mobile broadband, be it to surf the Net, watch Netflix or make calls via a wifi link.
High on the hill farm antenna
If you don’t have mobile coverage at the house but you pick up 2-4 bars up on the high point of the farm, then you could head up there and put up a 1-10m tower, with an antenna (max 10m, the cables won’t carry signal much further) and then plug in a stationary receiver plus a second antenna to repeat the signal down to the house (maximum 3km away) and pick up the signal that way.
To the set-up you will need to add a battery and solar system to power the repeater. Talk to this clever mob called Zetifi in Wagga Wagga who can build mini wi-fi cells with smart beam antennas ZetiRover and ZetiCell for the last mile links to and from the back paddock.
NBN fixed wireless
If you are lucky and live within 14km of town and have line of sight (or close enough to it) to an NBN fixed mobile tower, then you may be in one of the growing number of regional shires that can get onto the fixed wireless network.
Fixed wireless is basically a direct digital signal feed sending data from an NBN tower (or other provider) usually located in town across the airwaves, rather than via optic fibre to your house, all at broadband data pricing.
From the house or an antenna on a high point on the property, you can rebroadcast the signal via a microwave kilometres to a second location, then, via a third antenna, radiate the signal across a smaller 500m radius.
Farmers use this to give broadband coverage to the sheds or around the field bin when working in the paddock, house, shed etc.
It can even be used to make and receive calls on your mobile if you tap into the wi-fi calling setting on your phone, but again you have to be in that 500m radius.
It offers fast broadband but is limited in distance to that 14km from the main tower. Hopefully that will double to 28km in 2025, but remember it still must be line of sight to the town’s tower.
Earlier this year, the NBN and the Federal Government announced a $750m program of work to upgrade the Fixed Wireless network, adding nearly every Australian town. The upgrade will extend the range, deliver high speed tiers and increase the busy hour speed from 6mb to 50mb.
Along with Starlink, it’s the next big thing in connectivity.
NBN Satellite SkyMuster
SkyMuster Plus is the latest upgrade to the old satellite system. It now has uncapped data 16 hours a day for video streaming, which fixes a major complaint.
The cost is around $100 per month with a dish included but speeds are limited to 512MB which is vastly slower than what’s on offer using land based mobile, fibre or fixed wireless or Starlink.
Once again you can use satellite to push a signal around your farm, just as you can with fixed wireless.
Starlink
You can help Elon Musk pay off Twitter by signing up to join his Starlink satellite network. The service has been taken up by over half a million people across 44 countries with hundreds of Australian farmers signing on this year.
The satellites are 60 times closer to earth than the two big NBN ones sitting stationary 44,000 miles up, which means no latency.
They don’t work with your mobile unless it’s through a wi-fi app, even through it should be possible to send emergency data calls directly via the satellite. But they are a non-starter for replacing earth-based towers.
Again, voice over internet fed through your modem via wi-fi to your mobile phone is a simple workaround option out to 500m from the dish.
You could put one in the header and run around the paddock, and it will work. Have a read of Tucks Truck, a blog by a couple of British travellers (great read for those who want to go exploring the world in their bongo van) who installed a dish on top of their 4WD.
Musk has worked out there is demand for portability in motion, so there are new flat dishes coming that can sit on the roof of a truck/ute/header/tractor for on-the-go connectivity, but it seems it already works with the current small round dish, as proven by Tucks Truck.
No doubt Musk is talking to John Deere, CNH etc and it’s likely to be an option on your next tractor/header.
Cost for the kit $924 (discounted to $450 until Xmas) plus $139 per month, plus the repeater extender ($500) to radiate the signal out to 500m. My guess is most farmers will end up with one that they will bolt to the header or tractor or set up on the high point of the farm as they are a good back up when mobile coverage fails.
Build your own mobile tower
If you are really frustrated with Optus or Telstra there is no reason that you can’t write a cheque for $500k – $1m and get them to build you a tower on your farm. The miners do this all the time, your neighbours will love you.
There is also a good business opportunity for someone to put together a deal, sub-leasing mobile base stations to groups of farmers. Only problem is I don’t know how you lock out the free riders who are all for you paying while they get the advantage of extra bars on their phones.
The development commissions working with the councils are the obvious coordinators. Councils can rate the cost onto all their ratepayers but those sitting near existing towers won’t be too impressed with the new tower levy on their rates.
The added problem is Optus and Telstra will be selective about where they can be set up so as not to end up messing with existing towers. Optus should be more interested as they have big gaps in their network.
No doubt growers with large farms in the eastern wheatbelt who are unlikely to even see a new towers in their area will eventually decide to sort the problem themselves; 20 growers, 20 years, $1m and the cost benefit will soon stack up. Even more so for the neighbours who don’t contribute.
For those who are thinking about doing this then use the WA State Governments Agricultural Produce Commission (APC) fund-raising mechanism; it’s a simple cheap way to administer the funding of industry good projects involving a group of growers.
Advice
Now this took me a day to put together, so no doubt I have missed parts of the equation or got it wrong.
But at the very least it should help point you in the right direction. For independent advice on farm and regional connectivity talk to the Regional Tech Hub 1300 081 029, Boyd Brown the regional rep for Telstra boyd.m.brown@team.telstra.com Naomi Evans from NBN naomievans@nbnco.com.au and Dan Winson from Zetifi hello@zetifi.com for last mile solutions around the house, sheds and fieldbin.
If it’s simply to complain about black spots then pick up the phone and call the State and Federal Labor Ministers for Regional Development, it’s they who are standing on the blackspot hose.
Last word and first bit of advice for the new WA Minister: instruct DPIRD to commission an independent $20,000 review of their Regional Connectivity Program and call for submissions from NBN, Optus and Telstra and Zetifi to find out what they can do with $30m to boost on farm connectivity.
