Mr Bertil Lidén from the Forestry Research Institute of Sweden says that the Institute forecasts annual savings of at least 400 million SEK (44 million €) when mobile broadband is available in the whole country.
Forest industry constitutes an important incentive for installing mobile broadband in the whole country. That industry cannot fully benefit from this technology until all forest areas are included in the network.
At present forest industry's annual transport costs amount to about 4 billion SEK (440 million €). The simple logic is that transports can be managed much better when all operators concerned have full access to current information concerning all felled trees. Trucks can fetch timber at the right place and the right time and thus always work at full capacity.
Upon an initiative from Sveaskog the major forest businesses in Sweden plan a common infrastructure standard to be implemented already this year. This technology can be installed in all forest machines and trucks and then it will be possible to achieve great savings. However Bertil Lidén forecasts that it will take at least three years before the system can be fully operative.