Private Wireless Network Comes to the Farm, Enabling Precision Agriculture

Private wireless networks are poised to play an important role on the nation’s farms, potentially creating opportunities for rural network operators. A deal between computing provider Trilogy Networks and Inland Cellular aims to provide farm-wide coverage and address connectivity as an obstacle to the adoption of precision agriculture. It calls for Inland Cellular to offer private wireless to farms in its service area in the northwestern US to blanket the farm with wireless coverage. Private wireless networks use the same technology as public networks but are for the exclusive use of one company or public entity, or in this case, one farm. Inland Cellular will use licensed and unlicensed CBRS spectrum to support the offering. Technologies supported will include cellular technologies such as 4G and 5G, as well as Wi-Fi and LoRaWAN. Until now, private wireless networks have been the domain of large corporations or public entities that either build their own networks or purchase those networks as a service from one of the nation’s largest carriers such as AT&T and Verizon. But rural companies like Inland Cellular may be better positioned to provide private wireless networks to support precision agriculture. In the Inland Cellular Trilogy deployments, data gathered on a farm’s private network using precision agriculture will be sent to edge data centers operated by Trilogy. Connectivity can be via a landline broadband link or via Inland Cellular’s commercial wireless network.