Heathgate Resources Unearths Reliable Peplink and Starlink Connectivity
Heathgate Resources is an industry leader in mining and processing uranium, adopting a unique method, in-situ recovery, to minimize impacting and shifting earth. Their operations are found in South Australia’s Four Mile, Beverley, and Beverley North mines. To support business communications and everyday operations in remote areas, reliable connectivity is crucial.
Challenge
With their mining sites located in remote areas, Heathgate Resources has been operating on a microwave link and satellite connectivity, with a limited redundant communication option of 2 Mb/s. This restricted their connectivity usage. During periods of service disruption, they were confined to safety and operational services.
The company wanted to invest in a network infrastructure that could cater to all operational needs as well as the connectivity usage of employees during their free time to connect with their friends and family back home.
Solution
Australian Peplink distributor, M2M Connectivity, worked with MIMP Connecting Solutions and Vocus to deliver an unparalleled solution for Heathgate Resources. At the mining site, an EPX was deployed as the centerpiece of the infrastructure. Connected to the EPX were 8 strategically placed Starlink terminals.
An on-premise FusionHub was established by MIMP, forming a SpeedFusion tunnel between this and the EPX. Paired with Vocus Satellite – Starlink services, SpeedFusion’s bonding was enabled to build redundancy within the network.
“This changes the landscape in Australian telecommunications. We can join multiple connection types together and present it to the customer as a single internet connection to use all the combined bandwidth at once. It’s available anywhere in Australia, and it works just as well on moving vehicles as fixed ground-based installations.”
Ashley Grove, Satellite Development Manager at Vocus
Result
The bonded solution was able to deliver speeds of up to 1.3 Gbps in download, and 250 Mbps in upload. With the bonded network, Heathgate Resources was able to supply more than 250 workers with sufficient bandwidth and internet speeds to enjoy during their free time.
A month after the installation, a fire broke out at a neighboring national park damaging the microwave communication tower Heathgate Resources previously relied on as a primary form of connectivity. Despite this, the new infrastructure in place minimized any impact on the mining site, experiencing zero loss of connectivity.
“Previously, our redundant communication option was a limited 2Mb/s satellite link. During outages, business communications were restricted to essential safety and operational services. The bonded Vocus Satellite – Starlink service has significantly improved our situation, allowing the mine site to keep operating even in unforeseen circumstances.”
Hugh Banister, CIO at Heathgate Resources
