For Nina Guo, Product Manager of Digital Farming ANZ at Bayer, “the ability to improve data connectivity” in regional Australia is an exciting prospect and something that has the potential to help users of Bayer’s FieldView platform, which was only recently launched in Australia. FieldView is a digital platform that uses a piece of hardware called the ‘FieldView Drive’ to read data from the machine and deliver real-time data to the user in the cab. The technology has the potential to boost yields through insights and options for metre-by-metre tailoring of seed rates, spraying, weed management and more.
Being able to make these data-driven decisions in real-time requires reliable connectivity. For this reason, Nina and the Bayer team were very keen to trial the 5G ZetiRover with some of their FieldView customers as “they would be solving quite a big issue” and eliminating a potential barrier to adoption for this innovative new technology.
The 5G ZetiRover enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) device was installed on the tractor of Rhys Thomason to provide connectivity to his Bayer FieldView system. Most of Rhys’ time evaluating the 5G ZetiRover connectivity was while he was working with the FieldView system on a broadacre cropping operation to the west of Darlington Point in the Riverina region of NSW. Phone signal is usually very poor in this area but he found that the ZetiRover provided reliable connectivity for his phone and the FieldView system worked well in all locations. Interestingly, the data collected by Zetifi showed that the ZetiRover connected to 5G Telstra coverage at a distance of 11 kilometres from the township; much further than would be possible with a phone handset alone.
Photos: 5G ZetiRover unit mounted on Rhys Thomason’s tractor while he works the fields to the west of Darlington Point, NSW.
NOTE: This case study was researched and written by Birchip Cropping Group as part of the Australian Government-funded 5G Innovation Initiative (5GII) project. The 5G enhanced mobile broadband ZetiRover unit was provided to Rhys Thomason of Commins Enterprise free of charge for the period of the trial.
