Mt Alford Agribusiness Syndicate, Canterbury, New Zealand

The Customer

Six agribusiness operators in the mid-Canterbury foothills worked together to improve their communications. The syndicate comprises a high country station, rural contractor and cropping, dairy and cattle farms.

The Challenge

The syndicate members wanted communications with increased functionality and superior coverage and they wanted to save money. In the past the operators used cellular phones or A-band radios for communicating. The combination of expensive annual cellular phone bills, marginal coverage and the need to upgrade their A-band radios led the syndicate to a mobile radio solution.

The group bought a Tait base station/repeater with solar powered back-up. This is situated on Mt Alford, providing coverage in a 150 kilometre radius.

The Solution

The repeater site is reserved for communications outside the local area. Most of the time the syndicate uses a simplex channel for back-to-back
communications with the conventional channel zone.

The capital cost of creating the system amounted to about one-third of what each member was spending on their annual cellular phone bills.
The main advantage is the increased functionality of mobile features over cellular phones - like CTCSS and radio channel scanning.

The CTCSS function provides call privacy so that farm operators don't hear each others' conversations and channel scanning monitors the channels
ensuring calls aren't missed.

Since the members stopped using the more expensive cellular technology, communication has increased and the system is now used regularly for a range of conversations including directing truck drivers, mustering stock, and even telling the quarters to put the "billy" on for a cup of tea.

An emergency call feature is an added benefi t for members who are often in remote areas. Because the members of the syndicate are from a range of operations, their farming season peaks occur at different times avoiding overloading the system at any one time.

To keep costs to a minimum the 40 radios used by the syndicate were bought in bulk. The majority of users have Tait mobiles in their vehicles combined with Tait portables.

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