Rural Wireless Solar Network Extension

In some cases, due to terrain or obstacles such as trees, a household looking at connecting to our Rural Wireless service may not have line-of-sight to our local Rural Wireless tower.

Even an object as simple as a tree can create problems, if a tree stands between your house and the local tower the service may work during winter but come summer when the tree grows its leaves, it may become completely unworkable.

In the first instance, we try and work around line-of-sight issues by installing a Local Network Extension. These are our most cost-effective extension options so check out the page we've linked above.

Where a Local Network Extension isn't appropriate, we can do a Solar Network Extension.

How it works is we identify a location on your property that can see our tower (typically a hill), that can also see the other buildings that you are wanting to connect, including your home.

The Solar Network Extension package includes installing a pole, two solar panels, and two high cycle lead-carbon batteries.

We will then connect a regular Rural Wireless receiver and an additional wi-fi repeater that provides a 1.5km local coverage extension. We then proceed to connect all the residences with regular installations with each installation signing up for its own plan with Full Flavour.

If there is a neighbouring property that would also like to connect, with your consent we do permit this and you might want to ask them to contribute towards the cost of establishing a Solar Network Extension, which does incur a one-off charge of $4000.

Upon completing installation we hand this equipment over to you and it remains your property and responsibility to maintain. We do continue to monitor the batteries and we'll give you a heads up if any issues arise. While our supplier offers a 7-year warranty on the equipment, we'd expect the batteries to need replacing after 5 years.

Full Flavour retains ownership of any radio equipment supplied.