Rural Wireless Local Network Extension
Published: 8/31/20, 10:52 AM
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.
One way we can work around line-of-sight issues is by installing a Local Network Extension.
How it works is we identify a building (that has mains power) on your property that can clearly see the local tower, as well as any other buildings (main farmhouse, worker houses, and cowshed for example) and we, install our regular Rural Wireless receiver (see picture above). In addition, we install an additional wi-fi repeater that provides a 1.5km local coverage extension. We then proceed to connect all the residences with regular installations.
As a general rule, we only permit these types of Local Network Extensions to connect other houses on the same property. You can imagine how frustrating it would be if your connection was reliant on a neighbour who then forgot about the network extension and turns the power off to their house when they go away for holidays. It would be very hard for us to get in touch with them to restore your service!
Where multiple adjacent properties have common ownership (same farm/business or related families) we can make an exception to this rule.
A Local Network Extension incurs a one-off charge of $1000 and we leave it up to the applicants to decide how they wish to split this charge. We can waive this charge for customers who sign up for our annual plan option.
Where an applicant doesn't have a suitable building on their property or there are neighbours wishing to share an extension solution, they may consider a Solar Network Extension.
