Accessibility. Time and time again, guaranteeing accessible environments has proven to be an ever-necessary hurdle. Accessibility as an umbrella term can apply to forms of media like film and television, daily travel, eAccessibility and so much more. And in the vein of modern technologies, with accessibility comes the simplification of and improvements to connectivity. The near-limitless use cases to which both streamlined accessibility and connectivity should apply are, in essence, needful questions awaiting adaptive answers.
To that point, we arrive at news from renowned satellite connectivity provider Sateliot and their plan to improve farming and livestock management in limited or completely out-of-coverage global areas next year.
Fresh off the heels of joining the prestigious IoT M2M Council (IMC) in September and then announcing the launch of their first functional low-Earth orbit (LEO) nanosatellite (slated for Q1 of 2023 with SpaceX), Sateliot made news again with its recent announcement to provide 5G narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) connectivity to more than 400,000 5G devices by Q4 of 2023. This is aimed to improve livestock management worldwide, starting in South Africa alongside native company Streamline.
Traditionally, livestock management via cellular devices (i.e. ear tags) has lent the ability to predict and control the spread of disease amongst select farm animals, while also tracking their locations in normal day-to-day situations and, unfortunately, in incidents involving theft. Yet still, these methods aren’t widely accessible to most farmers the world over due to land with next-to-zero cellular coverage. And even when coverage is theoretically attainable, the procurement and maintenance of 5G devices too often leads to the same result: Without a plan for substantial connectivity improvement, livestock management and agriculture practices suffer.
This is where Sateliot has stepped in to broadly redefine coverage and its associated maintenance costs. Together, Sateliot and Streamline will deploy the aforementioned 5G NB-IoT livestock devices capable of seamless connections with Sateliot’s Non-Terrestrial Networks, a.k.a. cell towers in space. Once this plan is in motion, formerly uncovered spans of land are set to receive coverage, thus facilitating growth on a state-of-the-art level for countless farmers in need. It goes to show (and tell) that the boom of the IoT market is palpable, especially when farmers can affordably reap the benefits of 5G without financial (or even certain terrestrial) limitations.
Edited by
Erik Linask
