Intelsat to Connect CNH Tractors With Satellite Connectivity

CNH taps Intelsat to connect tractors. Photo: CNH

Intelsat will provide CNH tractors and agricultural machines with ubiquitous internet access under a new deal announced Monday. CNH includes the brands Case IH, Steyr, and New Holland. 

Under the new memorandum of understanding, Intelsat and CNH will equip tractors with a ruggedized satcom terminal to provide connectivity in remote locations. Intelsat and CNH plan to introduce the solution in Brazil in the third quarter of the year. The companies plan to expand their collaboration to the U.S., Australia, and other regions.

This news comes after John Deere moved to add a satellite solution to its agriculture fleet, selecting SpaceX to provide connectivity with its Starlink constellation. The John Deere and Starlink solution will start out with a limited release in the U.S. and Brazil starting in the second half of this year. 

“Machine connectivity in farming is becoming quite important because machines built by big OEMs like CNH have all kinds of technology and capability built into them,” says Mark Rasmussen, Intelsat senior vice president of business development. “Unleashing that capability depends on connectivity to the cloud applications provided by the machine manufacturer. Without that connectivity, these machines can’t deliver the full potential what they were built to do.” 

CNH said this connectivity will realize gains in productivity and yield by enabling precision agriculture. Machines will be able to communicate with one another, and to connect to the cloud, exchanging data and receiving directions from farmers. 

“Satellite technology helps solve complex connectivity challenges for hard-to-reach farms, but not all providers are equal. Intelsat stands out for their depth of experience as well as the quality and reliability of their service and industrial terminal offerings. They get what it means to be rugged. We look forward to serving customers around the world with their solution,” Marc Kermisch, chief digital and information officer at CNH said in a statement. 

CNH is invested in expanding connectivity in Brazil and is a founding member of the organization ConectarAgro. CNH cited the ConectarAgro Rural Connectivity Indicator that 19% of the area available for agricultural use in Brazil has high-speed internet access.

Rasmussen said the solution will start out with coverage from Intelsat’s Geostationary (GEO) fleet, and incorporate Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) coverage from Eutelsat OneWeb around the end of the year. Intelsat recently expanded its deal with Eutelsat Group for OneWeb capacity, committing to $250 million for LEO services over the first six years. 

Like the John Deere satcom solution, it will be sold by Case IH and New Holland dealers as an aftermarket kit. It will use a multi-orbit hiSky antenna. 

“It’s a built-for-purpose terminal that accesses multiple orbits,” Rasmussen said of the terminal. “For the farmer, it provides the highest network reliability because it has multiple options and paths to achieve connectivity. It provides greater throughput because it’s tapping the resources of different constellations.” 

Rasmussen said Intelsat hopes to eventually connect hundreds of thousands of machines for farmers around the world, and hopes to work with multiple agriculture, construction, and trucking OEMs on similar solutions to achieve scale and drive cost down. 

“There’s enormous interest among construction, transportation, and trucking [for] tracking assets, telematics, and bringing higher speed connections to what’s already a use case,” Rasmussen said. “In transportation, they’ve been using very low data rate kinds of services very effectively for a long time. They’re looking to move up the throughput chain to higher speed to enable more advanced applications.”