The Rural Cloud Initiative (RCI), which is a coalition of network and edge innovation partners backed by Trilogy Networks, is aiming to deploy a unified, distributed cloud covering an area of 1.5 million square miles of rural America.
Trilogy Networks and other RCI partners have built a Digital Transformation Showcase at the New Continuum West Chicago NAP data center in Chicago to demonstrate Internet offload, rich media streaming, AI-based network capacity planning, and AI-based video analytics.
RCI has also launched the first phase of its “Farm of the Future” series at Hurst Greenery in Westboro, MO. Here the idea is to use distributed cloud edge capabilities to facilitate and unlock the value of precision agriculture.
“The proliferation of smart technology has sparked America’s fourth Industrial Revolution, with a massive impact on the opportunity to drive enhanced productivity and increased security. The rural market is rife with IoT devices critical to industries like agriculture and the digital oilfield,” said George Woodward, CEO of Trilogy Networks. “Supporting this transformation will require the deployment of connected devices at the network edge that will enable new business models for both network operators and rural industries. While others are talking about it – Trilogy and our RCI partners are proving that both the technology and business value of edge solutions is provable, scalable and repeatable across a number of use cases and vertical applications.”
“Automating energy, water and yield management with such transformative technologies are critical for family farms to protect future agriculture production,” said Blake Hurst, owner of Hurst Greenery, as well as President of the Missouri Farm Bureau and Vice-Chair of the FCC Precision Connectivity Working Group. “As this network scales it will be able to address the needs of the 2,300 farms in this coverage area.”
