TruTeq Devices Focuses on the Farming Community After Providing Wireless Security-Based Solutions

TruTeq Devices, which provides wireless connectivity solutions to all market sectors – including the likes of Eskom and Sasol – is to increase its focus on providing wireless solutions to the farming sector in South Africa after providing various solutions for “thousands of farmers” over the past few years.

This is according to Derick Roberts, CEO of TruTeq Devices, who said the company has now embarked on a “concerted campaign” aimed at the farming community and would be offering a wide range of wireless solutions, including remote wireless telemetry; control and management of pumps, boreholes, motors, irrigation systems, digital weather stations, fire warning systems, forestry temperature monitoring, dam levels and tank levels; as well as wireless Internet connectivity, wireless voice desktop telephone and fax solutions for office requirements; and a wide range of security solutions – including wireless alarm systems.

To this end the company has signed a joint venture agreement with Interlock Systems, an engineering design and manufacturing company specialising in the development of niche products for problems related to vandalism and theft. In terms of the joint venture, TruTeq Devices will supply its Smartoo modem and router family of products, a revolutionary new concept that allows users to remotely run, and monitor, a wide range of business and home-based utilities and facilities.

Interlock Systems, which focuses on a wide range of markets, and boasts clients that include the Department of Water Affairs and the Metropolitan Water Board, supplies bespoke enclosures that are frequently used to house telemetry and remote monitoring equipment.

“Our partnership with Interlock Systems is well-suited to the requirements we see in the farming community, where theft and crime is a serious worry. We believe our remote wireless security solutions can bring major benefits to the farming community in terms of safeguarding – not only their assets – but also their lives.”

Besides the recent deal struck with Interlock Systems, TruTeq also works with local security companies deploying alarms and CCTV applications from farms to isolated businesses, factories, shops, homes and mining operations. “It is simply too big a scenario to cover all the holes in the security environment, fighting theft of livestock, illegal poaching, cables, diesel from generators – and sometimes the complete generator. Farmers are losing a fortune to theft – and, unfortunately, in many instances, their lives.

“The theft of these items can cost millions of Rands due to the unnecessary expenditure on the replacement of damaged infrastructure, instead of being able to allocate this money to other required maintenance requirements or upgrades.”

Commenting further, Roberts said the problems facing the farming and agricultural environments – with regards to connectivity requirements – is not just a South African issue, but rather “an African issue”. “It’s a case of different countries, but the same issues – and these issues can be addressed as the cellular operators’ connectivity and coverage gets better and easier to deploy, thereby enabling a wide range of wireless solutions.

“In this domain there might be less demand for voice traffic compared to urban environments – but the farming community is going to prove very interesting when it comes to data traffic and machine to machine (M2M) connectivity. The market is largely under serviced, under developed – and certainly not maximised to its full potential.

“The M2M space – fully tapped- is worth Millions in revenue as a long term sustainable business case as dependence on Remote Wireless Management solutions becomes a ‘Can’t do Without ‘ solution, “said Roberts.