a single solution applicable to all sites, the staff can use their own smartphone and you save money as well.
A provider of remote connectivity solutions has a number of customers in the mining industry. An industry with companies typically managing activities in multiple countries, sometimes even spread over more than one continent. The mines are most often located on the edge or over the edge of regular mobile coverage.
Personnel of these companies may travel between different sites within a country or even between countries. Ideally these people can also call out or be reached, wherever they are, also on site. Using their own device!
Although there are other mobile wireless (RF) technologies, GSM is and will increasingly be the technology of choice as it delivers the best possible state of technology and ease of use, at the same time, from a user perspective.
There is typically no incentive for a local operator to go through the trouble of opening up these remote areas, as the subscriber fees based on the number of users is too low.
For the mining company though, it is a completely different story as they need to put up some sort of infrastructure or comms methodology anyhow, so the economic rationale is different.
iVent with its deep routed experience in mobile networking developed a solution; simple deployments of private local mobile networks.
Such a private local network can be installed covering the complete side providing indoor and outdoor coverage. Using the GSMA approved standards it delivers in essence 3 unique features in the ability to roam on this private GSM network;
1, Inbound roaming, i.e. being reachable with your own SIM card wherever you are,
2 Outbound roaming, the ability to call wherever, whenever, using your own SIM/device and
3 the possibility to call within a site.
The uniqueness lies in the mobile networking technology and can be delivered for self-installation. However for some sites the solutions delivered are turnkey, whereby iVent also delivers the engineering and implementation of the mobile infrastructure. In effect we thus build mini operators making use of our roaming agreements with existing operators.
The benefits of this solution for our customers customer are that it can typically cover the whole site and all the people on it with one (1!) GSM transmitter thus saving on infrastructure procurement, installation and maintenance costs, and with the added benefit that a single technology is deployed globally.
People can call out and be reached on their own mobile device, with their own SIM, in the bush of sub-Saharan Africa, the outback in Australia or the jungle in South America. Hence the user experiences total ease of use with for example of all of his regular contacts and other functionality he is accustomed to with his phone.
This solution now has also found its merits in exploration sites for the Oil and Gas industry and with (non) governmental organizations in Peace and Aid.
For further reading please also refer to MySIM and MyPhone under Solutions