Preventing a catastrophe ruining some of New Zealand's medicine stocks - a fear heightened by the Covid-19 pandemic – is being partly shouldered by a privately owned Bay of Plenty company.
Tauranga-based Nutech Security monitor the refrigeration conditions for medicines stored in a number of private medical facilities and pharmacies in the upper North Island using remote technology set up through its connection to the Vodafone 5G network.
Thaigan Govender, Vodafone NZ's Head of Mobile Access Networks, says the company has invested millions of dollars in digital infrastructure in the Bay of Plenty region (an independent audit last year revealed Vodafone has the widest 5G availability of any network in the region) which help businesses like Nutech operate more effectively.
"They and many of our customers in the region would have noticed improved speeds and quality of calls as a result," he says.
Nutech also monitor conditions in chicken farms up and down New Zealand and sales manager Aidan Page says a critical aspect for both the birds and medicine is temperature control.
Keeping medicine at the right temperature is especially important. "A change can create problems causing a medicine to become non-viable," Aidan says. "Should this happen our role is to alert our clients, so they have enough time to deal to the issue and prevent something catastrophic from happening."
Aidan's comments come at a time when the Covid pandemic – and the increasing concerns over the Omicron variant – have focused Kiwis more than ever on maintaining supply of medicines like the Pfizer vaccine.
Although the vaccine is not among the medicines Nutech is monitoring, Aidan agrees it is a good example of how important it is to maintain the right conditions (the vaccine needs to be stored at ultra-low temperatures of between -90 and -60 degrees centigrade for up to six months to remain viable).
"Medical facilities and pharmacies work in a time critical industry," Aidan says. "By using connected cutting-edge systems where we can diagnose faults remotely, we are able to instantly alert clients to a problem meaning they can rectify a potentially disastrous situation faster."
He says this level of efficiency would be much more difficult to achieve without the Vodafone network: "It is really important to our business and what we offer our customers."
Aidan says one of the other areas Nutech works in is chicken farming. Using the Vodafone network it provides environmental alarms to about 150 farms throughout the country, measuring animal welfare and monitoring power supply, temperature and the operation of cooling fans.
"Chickens don't sweat, so if the power goes off or a fan stops birds will overheat and some could die very quickly. If this happens someone needs to know straight away because a disaster like this could lead to loss of bird life and seriously jeopardize a farm's operation.
"There is also a big risk of fire in a chicken farm, although in 25 years of working in the industry, we've never lost a farm. At the end of the day we're in the risk business; our goal is to eliminate as much risk as possible and ensure our clients assets, people and businesses are protected."
Govender says work on Bay of Plenty infrastructure was among 250 cell sites Vodafone built or upgraded in Aotearoa in 2021. The work was necessary because data usage is increasing by about 50 per cent each year as Kiwis increasingly rely on mobile technology and digital services to live, work and play remotely.
He says the company is committed to the Bay of Plenty region and offers solutions for big and small businesses – from mobile phones and broadband internet to Internet of Things (IoT) devices to help agriculture and horticulture.
"Despite navigating the challenges of Covid-19 and other health and safety measures, our team upgraded 38 mobile cell sites and built 14 new sites across Bay of Plenty in 2021," he says. "In addition we have eight new Rural Connectivity Group (RCG) sites."
Govender says a third party umlaut audit report* shows Vodafone offers customers the best network in data performance and voice calls, the fastest downloads and the largest 5G footprint.
"The Bay of Plenty region is where we've completed our national programme of mobile network upgrades (the Manawatu-Whanganui region was the first). We're currently upgrading infrastructure in parts of the Waikato, Taranaki and Southland and we'll eventually work our way around all of the country."
* umlaut is a global leader in mobile benchmarking. In its report last August it found Vodafone to have the best mobile network in Bay of Plenty, scoring 700 points out of 1000 putting it ahead of 2degrees (606) and Spark (456).
It also showed Vodafone is more than three times faster than any other mobile operator in the region (average of 161 Mbps compared to Spark with 55 Mbps and 2degrees with 40 Mbps) while Vodafone's voice calling speech quality rated 3.8 out of five, compared to Spark at three and 2degrees 2.5.
For more information, visit www.vodafone.co.nz/5G