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Australia | Well put. I agree it will take some time for other states to come to the conclusion that there are many more public beneficiaries for Network infrastructure beyond surveyors. But it is still surveyors/engineers and their political bosses making the decisions. I think the farming lobby in each state will begin the process of influencing their respective governments, and this will involve teaming up with DOT surveyors. The surveyors will be on the farmers' side because it gets them what they need faster - win/win. A few more states and the tipping point will be reached in my view. The political clout of rural America will also be a huge factor.
In respect of private networks, my US experience is that the public investment is distorting capitalism in a few states and making what was already marginal, an even tougher business proposition for Ag dealers with RTK networks. Whether this is fair or not is obviously causing some arguments.
I have had 3 private Ag network owners in the US alone ask me if Leica would like to purchase their stations and subscriptions business. I have declined in all instances because the business model did not stack up even in the absence of a State RTK network. We would also have to spend an unjustifiable amount of money to get the installations up to par. There was one case where the maintenance costs were 30% higher than their annual subscription revenues. I just don't think these Ag dealers were told how much this was all going to cost by their equipment vendors. In MOST cases I have seen, they cannot monitor their stations, they cannot ensure position integrity, their mounting positions are unstable, they have poor installation sites, and they simply overlap 6 mile single baseline coverage circles and provide no failure redundancy with true multi-baseline networking. This extra stuff is all very costly... but needed to run a network at the lowest possible cost, with the highest reliability. Note I am sure there are those dealers who think a loss-leading network is worth it, but such a strategy rarely pays off, particularly with so much money being spent.
We are working on a potential solution to help integrate private networks but it may be some time off. We are also having no problem with Trimble RTK Network owners allowing mojoRTK owners to buy subscriptions and radios. They really want the business.
In the meantime, the RTCM 3.1 and MAX network RTK standards are the best hope to reach a 'brand independent' hardware world. We will be showing iMAX RTK working at the Farm Progress show for those interested.
Cheers John. | |
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Will John Deere become CORS compatible
