Because drilling and production operations are often conducted in remote rural areas and rigs move frequently to new locations, oil and gas companies have found it difficult to deliver large files of information from rig sites and production facilities to home offices on a real-time basis for daily analysis and management.

The first obstacle – local telcos offer limited bandwidth due to geographic limitations, making transmission of large files in real time difficult, if not impossible. Secondly, when operations move to new locations, re-establishing communications links using land line systems usually results in unproductive downtime that can cost thousands of dollars a day. Finally, when companies engage satellite systems, the cost to obtain adequate bandwidth is often very expensive and the high latency makes operating most advanced software solutions impossible.

Since ERF Wireless already owns or has access to long-range delivery networks, the company made the decision to develop the Mobile Broadband Trailer (MBT), a unique product for Energy Broadband that could function as a “last mile” delivery mechanism to overcome these challenges. This new product had to be agile, rugged and have the ability to move with the mobile nature of drilling operations.

Today, Energy Broadband utilizes its MBTs to provide high-speed broadband communication services to the North American oil and gas industry. With Internet bandwidth from 1Mbps to 5Mbps, an MBT can be quickly mobilized into any field environment up to twenty miles from any source of Internet connectivity. Once installed, the MBT delivers large amounts of data across the Internet from drilling sites, pump jacks, production facilities, separation plants, pipeline facilities and tank batteries.

Designed to enhance the speed of data delivery, the Energy Broadband MBT increases security options and minimizes mobility issues for drilling rigs that are constantly moving to different sites on weekly schedules. By locking onto the wireless signal being broadcast by a distant ERF Wireless communications tower, this unique product provides wireless broadband connectivity to support a variety of oil and gas field operations, including the actual drilling operation. Most importantly, the same day a drilling operation moves to a new location, so does the MBT.