The frontier in the Canadian North is moving further and further north every year. Forestry companies are willing to make significant investments to explore remote areas that previously did not make financial sense. The high cost of exploration is not the only challenge faced by oil and gas companies working in Northern Canada.

The Polar region makes two-way communication and global positioning systems for oil and gas companies nearly impossible. Most high-orbit satellites, similar to those used by satellite phones, remain stationary over the equator in a geo-synchronous orbit. Their ability to reach around the curvature of the earth to provide coverage in Northern regions is nearly non-existent. These high-orbit satellites also come with a price tag that is out of this world. Satellite phones, when they have coverage, are very expensive due to the high bandwidth usage.

GEOTrac works with a low-earth-orbit satellite network consisting of more than 36 satellites that circumnavigate the earth every 100 minutes. Traveling at more than 29,000 km/h on eight orbital planes, satellites are consistently passing 800 km above the Canadian North.

This exceptional coverage combined with low-cost bandwith provides forestry companies with a cost-effective, reliable solution for two-way messaging and global positioning systems.

Most forestry companies rely heavily on specialized third-party equipment as part of their forestry operations. Often companies will have hundreds of pieces of large equipment from various leasing companies sitting on their property. With GEOTrac, we can monitor the location and status of the equipment including operation time for maintenance. The loss of expensive equipment and savings from preventative maintenance can save companies thousands of dollars every year.

What is Geo Fencing? Every map point on earth has longitude and latitude coordinates. Global positioning systems can identify pre-defined areas by their longitude and latitude points. If a truck or piece of equipment enters a pre-defined area such as an LSD, a notification can be sent to central dispatch that a truck which has GEOTrac installed, has either entered or left that area. This is important to know if a company is monitoring closely the activity within that area.