The changing world of on-farm communications

Sunday, June 3, 2012

Two-way radios, Mike and 10-4 systems are still working for some farmers, but smart phone applications are also gaining acceptance

by MIKE MULHERN

Tools that allow farmers to communicate with employees, suppliers and family members are being offered on more devices with more features. It is possible with some smart phone applications to talk, text, send photos and keep a record of conversations and texts. It is also possible to lose time and money if your message doesn't get through, which could also happen.

Current options include walkie-talkie systems from Telus (Mike) and Bell (10-4), RIM's BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), a number of smart phone apps and good old reliable two-way radios. The list got even longer in May when Bell Mobility launched its new Push-To-Talk (PTT) service. Bell says it is " the first PTT service in North America that runs over a high-speed 4G  HSPA+ (High Speed Packet Access) network and eventually 4G LTE (Long Term Evolution)." Features offered will include presence detection to see who's available and simultaneous voice and data.

Bell adds that it is not giving up on the 10-4 system. "We still have many 10-4 customers – including those in the agricultural sector – and have no plans to shut the service down," a Bell spokesperson said in an email.

But there is some confusion over the future of both the Bell 10-4 and Telus Mike systems. An April 17 story in the Globe and Mail says the 10-4 system is being phased out.  However, Bell says that "customers will have the choice to continue with actual technology or adopt next-generation PTT, based on their needs or business usage."

The Globe piece also quoted Jim Senko, Telus' vice-president of small and medium business marketing, as saying Mike will remain even though it is based on the older iDEN (Integrated Digital Enhanced Network) technology that Sprint has been phasing out in the United States. That is causing confusion among Canadian customers and even distributors, who are advising customers to switch to smart phone apps that mimic the walkie-talkie experience. Those apps run on a number of platforms, include Heytell and Voxer.

In a phone interview with Better Farming, Senko said iDEN was a purpose-built solution for people doing instant, direct connecting. "It is the best technology and continues to be," he says.

"The challenge with IP-based applications," Senko says, "is that they are running through cellular data networks. If there's any congestion or contention for the IP packet, you'll get degradation in that service." he adds, "I'm not saying that it's bad to have an IP app. For some people it works just fine, but it's definitely not of the same quality standard."

He wouldn't say when Telus will switch from Mike to LTE but he did say, "We'll have an LTE solution well before any end-of-life discussions on Mike."

Wayne Black is an Ontario Federation of Agriculture director and a consultant who often speaks to farm organizations about social media and mobile technology use. Black, who farms in the Goderich area, has been getting questions from farmers about the best way to communicate with their employees.

"I got looking around and I found some applications for smart phones. One was Beepus for BlackBerry and another is Voxer for Android and Apple products." Voxer is a free app that uses your data time. It is very similar to Heytell. Black says he has been testing Voxer with other family members over the last month using their Apple products. "I like to test things out before I tell guys this is the way to go," Black says.

He likes Voxer because it keeps a record of conversations: "If you give directions, an employee doesn't have to ask you to repeat them because they are saved and can be played over again if necessary." The same applies to text so that one or multiple text conversations can be reviewed.

Black has found that there are delays with IMessages sent over the IPhone of up to 40 minutes. His tests on Voxer, so far, have shown that the service is almost instant. However, says Black, the service does not indicate that a message has been received.

"The challenge I find with any of these applications with the smart phone is that you don't know if it's going to get delivered or not. That's the challenge because it's on a data network. It compiles the data on your phone and then sends it out. You don't know if the guy at the other end of the field has got a cell network signal or not."

Jeff Ferguson of Ferguson Brothers of St. Thomas Ltd. says he and his staff use both cell phones and a two-way radio system. He favours the two-way radio system because everyone gets in on the conversation.

"With the two-way radio," Ferguson says, "everybody hears the conversation. You don't have to go over it. The 10-4 system is nice but then you're repeating yourself many times. If you really want to talk to a lot of people, I'd say the two-way radio system is better."

Ferguson says he has 12 to 15 employees, depending on the season. An annual license fee for the dedicated, two-way frequency is paid to Industry Canada. Ferguson says range in a mobile-to-mobile situation is from five to 15 miles.

RIM has been a favourite of farmers, partly because of BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), but that may soon change. Shaun Haney and Peter Gredig, who have two-way conversations on their AgNerd video blog, say they always ask farmers about cellphone preferences in group sessions. In a recent Calgary session with 50 to 75 farmers that they reported on their video blog, they asked farmers to raise their hands if they owned a BlackBerry. About 75 per cent did. Then they said: "Keep your hands up if your next phone is going to be a BlackBerry. Every single person dropped their hand." They went on to say farmers are often influenced by other family members who might have an iPhone or an android device. The farmer tries it and likes it, and decides to part with the BlackBerry.

Better Farming was unable to arrange an interview with anyone from RIM before deadline, but the company did supply these statistics:

BBM is one of the largest social mobile networks and continues to be a tremendous and growing success for RIM in markets around the world. It has more than 55 million active users worldwide and 70 per cent use it daily to communicate daily with friends, family and colleagues.

There are currently over 800 BBM Connected apps, including Facebook and Twitter. With BBM connected apps you can:

• Chat with BBM friends within your apps;
• Select BBM contacts right from the app and invite them to join in on the fun or download it;
• Share app activities and achievements on your BBM profile. BF

Sidebar: Understanding Tech Terms

PTT - Push-To-Talk. Bell's system will allow users to "connect instantly to one or many users with the simple push of a button." Bell says their PTT system has broad coverage "reaching 97 per cent of the Canadian population and most of the U.S. Plus . . . voice and data service in over 200 countries worldwide." Bell's system uses IP (Internet Protocol) for its coverage.

Mike - The Telus Mike system is also a PTT system. Although Bell and Telus use different technical approaches, to users both systems respond like a walkie-talkie with broad coverage. Telus uses Integrated Digital Enhanced Network (iDEN) technology for its Mike system.

iDEN - Integrated Digital Enhanced Network is a mobile telecommunications technology which provides the benefits of both cellular telephone and  trunked radio. Trunked radio allows multiple conversations to take place simultaneously over a few distinct frequencies. iDEN is being dropped by Sprint in the United States but is being expanded in other parts of the world.

IP - The Internet Protocol (IP) is the principal communications protocol used to relay information across the internet. A protocol, in this case, is a system of rules for exchanging messages between computing systems.

10-4 - In the citizens band radio world, 10-4 means "acknowledge, okay or understand your transmission" but Bell also uses 10-4 as the name for a service which allows "your regular mobile phone to be used like a walkie-talkie for immediate conversations with as many as ten 10-4 subscribers at once."

4G HSPA+ - 4G denotes the fourth generation of cell phone mobile communications standards (the successor to 3G). HSPA+ or Evolved High-Speed Packet Access, facilitates higher data rates or faster speeds for the end users.

LTE - Long Term Evolution is a standard for wireless communication of high-speed data for mobile phones based on technologies that increase speed and capacity using modulation techniques. BF