One of Fleet’s Proxima nanosatellites.

One of Australia’s largest equipment hire companies has kicked off a project to track its assets, in partnership with IoT company Fleet.

Kennards Hire announced the partnership yesterday afternoon, and will be one of the first of Fleet’s customers to be connected to Fleet’s constellation of Centauri satellites.

Telemetry data from rental equipment that is connected to Fleet’s satellite-enabled LoRaWAN network will be transmitted into space and back, allowing movements to be tracked anywhere at anytime.

Kennards Hire General Manager of Strategic Projects Craig Kesby said the partnership would allow the company to provide new services for customers such as real-time reporting of safety and environmental metrics.

He said Kennards Hire had long grappled with the issue of Australia’s fragmented connectivity particularly when tracking customers in the country’s most remote regions.

“This will make further equipment business cases possible on lower value items that might previously have not made an investment hurdle,” he said.

“There is potential for Fleet Space Technologies to open up connectivity for a much broader range of equipment beyond just the high value items.”

Fleet recently announced plans to expand its coverage after booking out its initial service offering in 24 hours, and plans to launch another 10 nanosatellites by 2020.

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