John Deere made headlines last year announcing a satellite project — looking for industry partners to connect thousands of agricultural machines beyond cellular networks — a major opportunity for the satellite industry. 

In this week’s episode, we talk to Chung Hsieh, senior infrastructure engineer at John Deere. Chung has long worked with the satellite industry on John Deere’s StarFire GPS augmentation network, and he has been working with participants in the RFP as well. 

Chung gives an engineer’s perspective on data and connectivity in agriculture, and dealing with the reality of physics constraints of satellite antennas, and his perspective on working with the satellite industry. The StarFire network is a foundational technology in terms of the impact it has had on John Deere’s business, and Chung believes a satellite connectivity solution could have the same level of impact on John Deere’s future, especially with the future of autonomous vehicles. 

Chung also gives an update on the RFP, and how Deere is testing and evaluating solutions from a number of finalists. This episode was recorded in-person in New Orleans at ConnectX after a panel that Chung and I were on about IoT and cellular connectivity, and there is a bit of background noise.