Articles
WiFi and Satellite Equipped Tractors to Follow Yorkshire’s Tour de France | ISP Review
Wifi tractors en route for the tour | Farming UK
From the horse’s mouth
Avonline Satellite Broadband (now Bigblu Broadband)
Home Page (updated link to be online by 25 June 2018)
National Farmer’s Union
My Comments
The Tour De France 2014 is starting off in Yorkshire UK and is an event that moves from location to location depending on where the péléton are cycling in this race. As I have seen for myself when I have watched this cycle race on SBS TV, it attracts huge crowds with various locations of flat land near the race route resembling caravan parks due to the many motorhomes showing up at each point because people hire these so they can follow the race by vehicle.
This time, the National Farmer’s Union in the UK have answered to the needs of the connected spectator by setting up mobile Wi-Fi hotspots. But how have they done this even though access to decent broadband in rural areas is non-existent? They have equipped two tractors with a public-access Wi-Fi hotspot consisting of a Wi-Fi hotspot router connected to a satellite-broadband modem provided by Avonline Satellite Broadband (now Bigblu Broadband). This means that each tractor has its own satellite bandwidth which is distributed by Wi-Fi over a range of 500 metres from where it is parked.
Locations
| Stage 1 Leeds – Harrogate |
Stage 2 York – Sheffield |
|
| Tractor 1 | Yorkshire Dales National Park Visitor Centre (Hawes) | Steel Stage event (High Bradfield) |
| Tractor 2 | Visitor Centre (Grassington) | Holme village |
One question that has been raised is whether the mobile hotspots and their satellite backhauls would cope under the pressure of many spectators tendering the images and video they take to multiple social networks using these networks. This is similar to situations that hoteliers would encounter when their guest-access Internet services are at capacity as all of the guests download multimedia content at the same time.
As well, it is an example of using network equipment powered from motor vehicles i.e. the Massey-Ferguson tractors to provide Internet access and making sure that the equipment does survive the distance with uneven power-supply conditions that this entails. I see this also appealing to other rural districts like France’s rural districts who want to cater to the connected visitor who attends a special event like a fair, rally or a cycle road race like the Tour De France.
Click to play “Back British Farming” video (if you don’t see it below)
Update (15 June 2018)
Due to corporate restructuring affecting Avonline Broadband, the satellite ISP mentioned in this article, which has led to it being rebranded to Bigblu Broadband, I have readjusted the Web link for this ISP and references to the name to reflect these changes.
