Rural Connectivity for Farm Sensors

Rural Connectivity for Farm Sensors

Tim Hammerich
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
It’s time for your Farm of the Future Report. I’m Tim Hammerich.

Many new agricultural technologies are pushing sensors that connect to the internet. This can be wearable technology for livestock, moisture sensors, soil sensors, pest sensors, and the list goes on and on. But internet-connected devices don’t do us much good if they can’t get connected to rural internet. SWARM Technologies is one company that’s taking an ambitious approach to achieve global affordable connectivity in rural areas. They are launching constellations of sandwich-size satellites into space. Here’s CEO Sara Spangelo.

Spangelo… “This is a very exciting year for us because we are going live in the commercial sense. So we have all our regulatory approvals. We'll be launching about 150 more (satellites) over the next year. And that'll provide us with a network of 150 satellites for global continuous coverage covering every point on earth at all times, and essentially providing a lower cost version of existing networks. And then with our network will be about 10 times lower cost, meaning it starts to become accessible for farming and agriculture and logistics and keeping people safe globally.”

You won’t be able to check your email using this service any time soon - their focus is on low bandwidth devices, like sensors. For that reason they are selling their service to technology companies so that their offerings can work anywhere around the globe.

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