A steel tower originally constructed by the US army in the 1940s and erected on Townsville’s Castle Hill is now hosting a cluster of 21st century dishes on a barren outcrop north of Richmond in the state’s north west, and helping innovative businessman Will Harrington bypass the tired internet systems that rural Australia is subsisting on.
The inventive grazier and Nuffield scholar-to-be has installed his own wireless link to Richmond, 46km away, using multiple ADSL connections, in order to remain in business in the bush.
His electronics company, begun in 2005 with an NLIS reader, supplies remote monitoring cameras and tank sensors to beef producers, irrigators, universities and environmental groups across Australia and overseas.
All that was available to him at the time he started to access the internet was a 24 kilobits per second dial-up service
He graduated to a 200kbs satellite service but at that point he needed more, because of the way business interactions were changing, and because data was beginning to cost a whole lot more, at $200 for 2GB.
“We tried IPSTAR but we were still limited by data and getting ‘shaped’ so we didn’t use it for long,” Will said. “Next we set up a Yagi antenna because we’re on the edge of mobile coverage, but it was very expensive.
“It was $150 for 12GB, but running the business was using huge amounts of data. We were paying an extra $400 a month and still couldn’t use a cloud server, or participate in School of the Air events.”
His own wireless link delivers him 3000kbs, and 1000GB of data for $150 a month.
“We had to do it,” Will said. “Our business relies on good internet. Without it, we wouldn’t be here.”
Some 10,000 pictures are often downloaded to computers in Will Harrington’s home office at Olga Downs, 53km north of Richmond, alongside a 3D printer spitting out brackets for his tank sensors to be mounted on.
His uSee remote monitoring business employs five people and has equipment in every state in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, East Timor and Vietnam, storing images in clouds for customers as varied as graziers keeping an eye on water levels in tanks, and abattoirs guaranteeing traceability.
It also uses interactive diagnostics to help customers troubleshoot via their computers.
“Having fast broadband means we don’t have to sit and ask if we’ve got enough data or money to do something,” Will said. “We’re a better business because of it.
“Our solution has removed the bottlenecks our business was experiencing.”
Neighbours to the east, south and west have hooked in and are also reaping the benefit for a price.
“Everyone else in the bush is trying to run a business on what we used to have,” Will said. “I just wish the government would realise how important fast internet is to us.
“It’s small towns that would benefit most and should be helped first. We don’t have access to everything they have in cities.
“If they had better internet, it would change the demographics of our little towns. You would see them grow and grow.”
Currently almost 67,000 Queensland premises have access to nbn’s fixed wireless service and very fast broadband, in places such as Toowoomba, Gympie, Bundaberg, Warwick, Pomona, Childers, Mackay, Townsville, Rockhampton, the Burdekin and large areas of the South Burnett, but this will expand to more than half a million homes and businesses.
Nbn announced this week that it was upgrading its fixed wireless service in regional and rural Australia.
A check of the rollout map on the nbn site at http://www.nbnco.com.au/develop-or-plan-with-the-nbn/check-rollout-map.html shows that fixed wireless services are currently operational as far west as Charters Towers, Emerald and Roma.
