"FINGERS crossed, it will be a boon for those of us who live in the bush and try to run our businesses over the internet".
That is the view of Pilbara cattleman Geoff Mills on last week's launch of the 'Sky Muster' communications satellite for NBN Co promising faster internet for up to 60,000 regional and remote WA residents from mid next year.
The first of two proposed broadband satellites for NBN Co, Sky Muster is expected to provide internet speeds up to five times faster than available now under the Interim Satellite Solution (ISS).
Mr Mills' "fingers crossed" view typifies the cautious but optimistic attitude of regional WA business operators.
Yet to experience all of the internet's commercial advantages enjoyed by city cousins, they have been frustrated by snail's-pace download and upload speeds and restrictive limits on data that have eroded its potential as an effective business tool in the bush.
Mr Mills manages Wallal Downs station next to 80 Mile Beach, 250 kilometres north-east of Port Hedland.
With his father Robin and brother Scott, he also operates Warrawagine station 120 kilometres north-east of Marble Bar on the fringe of the Great Sandy Desert.
At Warrawagine, lack of effective satellite internet has already hindered part of a $5 million Royalties for Regions-funded collaboration with the Department of Food and Agriculture (DAFWA), Department of Regional Development and Pilbara Development Commission.
As previously reported in Farm Weekly, three 38-hectare centre-pivot irrigators - one funded by the State Government, the other two by Warrawagine Cattle Company - were installed in March to use excess fresh groundwater pumped from nearby Woodie Woodie manganese mine.
One Warrawagine pivot was sown to lucerne, now well above ground and doing well, and the other is expected to be sown to sorghum next week, Mr Mills said.
The DAFWA pivot trial was sown to various summer crops, including lucerne, sorghum, Rhodes grass and legumes.
The GPS-mapped, computer-controlled irrigation system can deliver different water and nutrient levels to different quadrants of the pivot areas and the entire system, including pumps providing water from Wet Creek, was supposed to be monitored and controlled from Perth if needed.
But the volume of data from pump flow-rates, fertigator, diesel generators and weather station, coupled with slow upload speed, made it impossible with existing satellite internet to monitor and control the system remotely in "real time" as originally intended, Mr Mills said.
"We've had two government-funded satellite systems at Warrawagine and now we're trying to tap into the Next G (mobile phone) signal they have at the Nifty copper mine, about 50 kilometres away," he said.
"We've had to put a big (communications) tower up at Warrawagine and we are looking at using a Telstra-approved booster to get a signal across from Nifty."
Slow internet speed was the most frustrating aspect of trying to conduct business in a remote or regional area, Mr Mills said.
"At Wallal it can take 45 minutes just to download a picture if one of the kids sends some through from Perth on Facebook," he said.
"If a part on a machine breaks, the advantage of the internet was supposed to be that I could take a photograph of it, email it to the company with an order for a replacement and they would send me the right part.
"It takes 30 minutes to upload a photograph if it's not too high a resolution or doesn't time out.
"If I send it at a lower resolution it still takes 20 minutes to upload and when it gets to the other end it's not clear enough or detailed enough for them to be certain of the right part number.
"We're 250 kilometres from Port Hedland - taking everything into account, like fuel, registration, insurance, tyres, maintenance, wear and tear - we work on a vehicle operating cost of $2 a kilometre.
"So a 500 kilometre round-trip to town costs us about $1000.
"We try not to do that more than once a fortnight - you can pack $2500 worth of shopping for a fortnight into a LandCruiser station wagon, it's full to the gunwales, but it can be done.
"If they've sent me the wrong part - and it might be only a $30 part - I can get another one sent up express overnight, at extra cost of course, but then I've got another $1000 trip into town to pick it up."
Mr Mills said the current satellite broadband system was slowed further during peak usage periods before and after school hours and by heat during the middle of the day.
"Basically, if I want to do some internet banking or if somebody emails me an invoice or a receipt and I want to download it and do some work on my accounting package, I've got to wait until after 9.30pm," he said.
"It means an 18-hour working day, working sun-up to sun-down running the station and then sitting up half the night on the computer."
Speed issues aside, Mr Mills said the cost of extra data capacity often made it uneconomic for regional people to upgrade to a better internet package.
"It's very difficult to run a business over the internet from a remote area," he said.
"Hopefully the new satellite will improve things."
Pastoralists and Graziers Association president Tony Seabrook said it was a case of "wait and see" for members.
"We've heard so much talk about it, but it's very much a case of wait and see," Mr Seabrook said.
"It (effective internet) is an absolute necessity for doing business in regional areas.
"But it gets up my nose that they (governments and internet providers) pander to city electorates and all they are concerned about is download speed, to keep punters who like to download movies just for entertainment appeased.
"Meanwhile, we've got pastoralists who generate significant export income for this nation, who aren't able to do something as simple as internet banking."
