John Deere is partnering with SpaceX to improve connectivity for farm equipment.
The company’s Senior Product Manager for Connected Fleets says these Starlink terminals will be able to reach the third of rural Americans that are unable to get a good enough connection.
“This Leo offering, right, Starlink has a Leo constellation. It’s a low earth orbit constellation that proves. It’s higher bandwidth, lower latency to unlock all the tech that they need on their machines today and in the future. So we’re very, very excited about. This partnership. And and again, we’re looking to roll this out in the latter part of 2024 with them,” said Mike Kool.
Kool says this partnership is to help farmers dealing with connectivity issues. However, if the producer is not interested, nothing will change with their Deere equipment.
“This will be after market type kit from the beginning rollout where a customer can go to their dealer, purchase it, help with installation that year there will. That machine, and ultimately it will just connect that machine.”
Kool says John Deere feels confident this solution will help close the connectivity gap once and for all.
