Agriculture Mobile Communications Syndicate

Date : February 12, 2002

A string of enquiries from rural business people about improved mobile communications in the same area prompted Tait Communications Account Manager, Mark Maw to come up with a novel solution providing significant cost savings.

The Syndicate, based at the foothills of Mid Canterbury in New Zealand, is made up of six agribusiness operators including a high country station, rural contractor, and cropping, dairy and cattle farms.

Syndicate co-ordinator, David Clark says the group turned to mobile radio communications for three main reasons: greater functionality, superior coverage and cost savings. "Communication is vital in our industry and in the past the different operators have been using cellular phones or A-band radios for communications. The combination of cellular phone bills at $6000 a year, marginal cellular coverage and the need to upgrade A-band radios led the syndicate to a mobile radio solution," says David.

"We looked at several options however chose Tait. We were impressed by the advanced product technology, it's a New Zealand owned firm and being Christchurch based the service and support is local."

The group purchased a Tait T735 repeater, with solar powered back-up, which is situated on Mt Alford providing coverage in a 150km radius.
"The repeater site is reserved for communications outside the local area. For 90% of the time the syndicate is using the simplex channel for back-to-back communications within the conventional channel zone," says Mark.

For syndicate members the capital cost of creating the system amounted to about one-third of what each member had been spending on cellular phones each year.

The main advantage has been the greater functionality of mobile features over cellular phones, such as CTCSS and radio channel scanning.
"The CTCSS function provides call privacy so that farm operators are not hearing each others' conversations and channel scanning monitors the channels ensuring calls are not missed." says Mark.

"With the system now installed everyday chatter has increased with terminals being used for guiding truck drivers, mustering stock and even telling the quarters to put the 'billy' on for a cup of tea," says David.

"With cellular phones this sort of communication was not regular as it was expensive."

The emergency call feature is an added safety benefit for members who can often be caught in remote areas. "In the event of an emergency such as a scrub fire, snow storm or a machinery accident by switching to the emergency channel there is the potential for up to 50 terminals to hear the call and provide emergency back up," says David.

"The success of the syndicate has been the community approach to purchase the repeater and the ability of Mark Maw to source potential syndicate members." With members of the syndicate being from a variety of operations the farming seasons peak at different times of the year avoiding overload of the system at any one period.

Already syndicate members are considering extending the system's functionality with features like telephone interconnect for the ability to place and receive telephone calls on their mobile radios.