MINING SERVICES
VOCUS’ LEO SATELLITES WILL COMPLEMENT ITS FIBRE INFRASTRUCTURE.
CONNECTING THE DOTS TO ENABLE THE MINING INDUSTRY’S TRANSITION TO CLOUD-BASED TECHNOLOGY, VOCUS GROUP IS DEVELOPING FIBRE NETWORK CABLES AND SATELLITE TECHNOLOGY TO IMPROVE CONNECTIONS IN REMOTE AREAS.
A
ustralia is home to hundreds of mining leases that are being mined and explored across northern and western parts of
the country. But border closures and fly-in, fly-out (FIFO) travel bans due to COVID-19 restrictions have affected mining companies’ ability to source skilled workers. This situation is shifting many companies further towards automated and virtual means of conducting mining and exploration activities. However, these technologies require a fast and low-latency network connection, which is costly and often unavailable in remote mining areas. Vocus is developing multiple solutions to get rural mining areas up to speed through capable fibre network connections and satellite internet technology. “Smaller mining companies are going to want to be highly leveraged around their cloud infrastructure,” Vocus national general manager government and special projects Michael Ackland said. “Rather than smaller miners buying their own servers, they adopt ‘pay as you use’ servers, which are currently based on Australia’s east coast.” Vocus’ Darwin-Jakarta-Singapore Cable will allow mining companies to
hook up their cloud infrastructure to Singapore rather than Melbourne or Sydney, which will improve latency and cost. This will be the first international cable connection into Darwin and amps up the connectivity of much of northern Australia through stronger fibre infrastructure. Vocus is also developing Project Horizon, which will deliver fibre infrastructure from Geraldton to Port Hedland, Western Australia, and then on to Singapore via the DarwinJakarta-Singapore Cable. The company expects these projects to significantly strengthen the internet connection in remote regions of WA.
To complement its fibre services, Vocus is investing in LEO (low earth orbit) satellite-based telecommunications. In 2021, Elon Musk’s company SpaceX launched its Starlink satellite internet in a beta phase to Australian customers. It has delivered higher download and upload speeds that outclass fixed wireless connections. The technology was also hailed as a breakthrough for delivering internet to areas without fixed-line connections, a situation with which northern Australia has struggled. Rather than relying on fixed cables, LEO technology will provide an internet connection anywhere the sky is visible. For mining companies, there
MINERAL EXPLORERS CONDUCTING DRILLING CAMPAIGNS CAN BENEFIT FROM STRONGER TELECOMMUNICATIONS CAPABILITIES.
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is a strong value incentive to such a technology. According to Ackland, mine sites have been deploying edge computing systems to enable more remote operational capabilities. Edge computing is conducted on-site to deliver enough processing power to run remote operations across a mine operation. The need for edge computing has grown during the COVID pandemic as more operations require remote access. However, this can be costly, with Vocus’ “as a service” approach for satellite internet allowing mining companies to save costs and rely on the cloud rather than expensive edge technologies.
