High speed broadband and smart farming
Objective
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The farm is producing high-quality eggs from grass-fed chickens raised freely in the paddock. The chickens are moved to a new pasture every few days in mobile caravans.
The 'free range' label is allowed for use on eggs produced using varying degrees of chicken farming methods. This includes barn and fixed-location Consumers do not trust the 'free range' label. Additional evidence is needed to support how 'free' is the ranging of the chickens. The Farm would like to live stream the chickens every day, so that consumers have evidence of how chickens are farmed. |
Constraints
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The farm is located in a rural location in NSW. Up until 2018, the location was a listed Black Spot in the Mobile Coverage Improvement program.
The installation of additional Mobile towers in 2018 has improved the coverage by one mobile operator only. The packages offered by this one provider include a quota per month which is not enough to do 24/7 live streaming of video. HD video connection is not possible at all due to the upload speed limitation. The farm and all neighbouring farms experience a further deterioration in the quality of connnection after 3:30pm, when schoolkids return from school. This lasts until 10pm. Alternative satellite connection options lack the speed needed for video streaming and have a long lag. The pricing of both satellite and mobile packages is unviable for an egg production business. NBN is not planned for the area until 2022. |
High speed broadband solution
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A high-speed broadband solution, delievered by fibre, is the only way to enable HD video streaming, 24/7 of the free range chickens in the paddock, to the farm's website.
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