Agricultural and heavy-equipment maker John Deere launched Starlink’s satellite broadband service in Brazil and parts of the US to provide connectivity in rural and underserved locations.

Jahmy Hindman, SVP and CTO at John Deere, told Mobile World Live (MWL) shipping of the Starlink equipment began in January.

John Deere’s sales numbers are more than 2,000 to date.

“We’re actually seeing sales surpass expectation at this point,” Aaron Wetzel, VP of production and precision ag production systems at John Deere, told MWL.

He said the reason John Deere is offering the service in Brazil is because 70 per cent of it does not have any type of connectivity in locations where farmers are producing grain.

“For us to really create the value for them through our technology solutions, we need to bring that connectivity to them,” he said.

Wetzel stated roughly 20 per cent of the US lacks connectivity. About 70 per cent of the company’s connectivity in North America is mainly served by AT&T’s 4G network.

For 4G, it uses a modular telematics gateway antenna kit which includes eSIMs from various operators.

The Starlink equipment is installed on top of the cab on a piece of agricultural machinery.

John Deere’s mobile app gives farmers access to live video feeds on phones and tablets, along with the data collected by sensors. 

The agricultural giant is currently providing the Starlink equipment as an aftermarket product shipped directly from a factory to the customer.

John Deere confirmed the service is providing speeds of 50Mb/s to 100Mb/s on the downlink and 10Mb/s to 20 Mb/s for the uplink. Latency is in the range of 20 milliseconds to 70 milliseconds.

The satellite service helps the agriculture sector benefit from technologies and services such as autonomy, real-time data sharing, remote diagnostics, enhanced self-repair and machine-to-machine communication.