MobileCorp has been announced as the winner of the CRN Impact Workforce Empowerment 2023 award, for our 5G drone project with Gidarjil indigenous land and sea rangers in the Bundaberg Gladstone region.
The full list of winners is
MobileCorp CTO, Phill McSherry, receives the award at the Gala dinner in the Sunshine Coast, August 2023.
The Gidarjil Development Corporation has a well established aerial and underwater drone program operated by its land and sea rangers. The rangers deliver various 'Caring for Country' programs across an area which is almost 10x the size of the ACT taking in the southern reaches of the Great Barrier Reef and the turtle breeding conservation area at Mon Repos Beach, Bundaberg.
The GDC wanted to connect Gidarjil Elders with the work of the Rangers to facilitate knowledge-sharing and generational storytelling, and for exploration of cultural heritage sites offshore.
Physical barriers including topography and distance made it virtually impossible for Elders to attend aerial and underwater drone expeditions, or to participate in knowledge-sharing and exploration activities being undertaken by the Gidarjil rangers.
This project was one of the first cloud-managed 5G network deployments in Australia combining the Telstra public 5G network and Cradlepoint 5G gateway adapters. However, its significance was measured by the customer not in technological progress but in community outcomes. These were: