Verizon Business is leaning heavily into its parent company’s wireless assets that have historically traded on strong network coverage and were key to the operator recently scoring a unique partnership with autonomous tractor producer Monarch Tractor.

Monarch Tractor’s Carlo Mondavi explained that his family has a winery in the Napa Valley area of California, and he has one closer to coast of California, “and they’re in pretty remote areas. They’re really far from everything, and Verizon has done a wonderful job of being able to get service where no one else can.”

This coverage is important for Monarch Tractor, which is offering a fully electric and autonomous tractor targeted at helping farmers more efficiently tend to their fields. The MK-V tractor includes several cameras that feed into on-board computing power that allows the tractor to operate in areas that might not have a strong cellular signal but can also tap into Monarch Tractor’s Wingspan AG Intelligence cloud platform when there is a Verizon signal to support real-time automated operations planning, remote fleet management, tractor performance reports, and maintenance diagnostics using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).

“One thing that I really appreciate about Verizon as well is that in the event that there is an area that might not have coverage, they seem pretty gung-ho to get there,” Mondavi added.

Dave Hickey, VP of Verizon Business’ West Business Markets, explained in an interview with SDxCentral that the initial work with Monarch Tractor uses the carrier’s wide area 4G LTE network instead of its newer 5G network based on need.

“It’s connectivity based on their needs and what they're doing and that's all they really needed because they're sending data back and forth,” Hickey said of the work.

Hickey added that Verizon Business did talk with Monarch Tractor about more advanced connectivity options like the carrier’s newer 5G network and its ongoing work with private 5G networks, “but the way they've built their AI platform and their software collection, it doesn't have to be fully connected 100% while they're doing it.”

“I think a private network at this point on what they're collecting is probably overkill but definitely 4G connectivity, and then eventually 5G if they're needing it from a different autonomous perspective,” Hickey said.

How does Monarch Tractor benefit? Mondavi said that the current connectivity opportunity is powering a transformative way for how farmers manage their crops. This includes the ability to more precisely plan where work is needed and track that work, which can reduce overall energy consumption needs.

“Because we're a vision stack, there's an exorbitant amount of data coming in from the tractor from basically the root all the way through to the top of the canopy in the fruit zone and everything, and all that data is incredibly valuable,” Mondavi said, noting this allows for much more precise measurement and insight into the health of a field. “By being able to keep the whole field healthy with data, ... and farming is reactive, highly reactive, so you can react better. By being able to have this connection and be able to send that message right there in real time to the farmer that the tracker sees, and then be able to note that on a map where it is, when it is, with a picture, it's massive, and that's something that we're able to do because of our partnership with Verizon.”

Mondavi also passionately expressed the ability for this overall equipment and technology package to reduce the need for harmful farming practices.

“The biggest single reason why automation is so important is because of this reduction of chemicals,” Mondavi said. “By being able to automate mowing, it's a 100% reduction of herbicides. Of the 9 billion pounds of pesticides, you now remove one of the biggest.”

Mondavi noted that legacy farming practices are wildly inefficient, but by “being able to slow down through automation and use AI and machine learning and just the capabilities of an autonomous vehicle, a fully drive-by-wire tractor, you could be much more precise. If you can even get to 50% efficiency, it's a huge gain. And what I'm excited about is that on the table right now I believe that many farming environments, like California, there's the ability to have a 100% reduction of these chemicals, a 100% reduction of insecticides, and fungicides, and herbicides.”

The technology angle is also attracting related talent. Mondavi noted that some of Monarch Tractor’s employees include people that worked on the Mars Rover, were in charge of automation at high-tech firms like Tesla, and have come from the aerospace industry.

“I remember this woman that works with us at Monarch when she first joined, and she came from aerospace, and I asked, ‘what's attracting you to agriculture?’ And she said, ‘you know, I was sending up satellites to basically improve small things, whereas we're not focusing on our earth enough.’ And so now I call [our tractor] the Earth Rover, because we're really focusing on building something that's going to protect our planet.”

Verizon Business farming new opportunities Hickey also noted that the deal with Monarch Tractor followed one of several paths Verizon Business takes when it approaches new customer opportunities. This is based on having thousands of sales reps “out in the field that are working with small to medium businesses.”

“That's everything from they're going and knocking on doors and trying to earn their business to where they're just servicing them and taking care of them from a consultant perspective,” Hickey said. “We try to come in and quickly find out where they’re at. Are they outsourcing IT? Do they use something really formal? Or, in some cases, we find that they are prosumers and they're kind of going that route. We've even seen that in pretty large size companies where they've just always done it a certain way, very limited, and we've helped them get out of this document to a digital face.”

This approach is increasingly important for Verizon Business’ operations, which includes the carrier’s wireless and wireline services targeted at enterprise and public-sector customers. Those services include its ThingSpace IoT, 5G mobile edge compute (multi-access edge computing (MEC)), private 5G, security, managed services provider (MSP) and Virtual Network Services (VNS).

Verizon earlier this year slashed the value of its business operating unit, citing a downturn in the division that highlighted the company’s ongoing challenges in converting that business toward new technology opportunities.

Verizon in a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing stated that the devaluation was part of the carrier’s most recent five-year strategic planning review. That review found a notable downturn in its business unit over the past year, which resulted in Verizon recording a $5.8 billion impairment during the fourth quarter of last year for that operating unit.

Verizon specifically cited “secular declines as well as continuing competitive and macroeconomic pressure, in wireline revenue across its customer groups.”

To help combat this malaise, Verizon Business CEO Kyle Malady recently stated that the operating unit would shut down “products and services that are not helping us grow.”

“This will allow us to refocus resources in the areas that will move the needle for us going forward,” Malady said during the carrier’s sell-side analyst meeting earlier this year. Malady cited Verizon Business shutting down its BlueJeans video conferencing service as an example.

Scott Lawrence, SVP for global solutions at Verizon Business, told SDxCentral earlier this year that these outside influences were not impacting Verizon Business’s approach to 2024.

“Our pipeline is strong. Our global customers are excited to hear from us and the thought leadership we can bring,” Lawrence said. “I’m approaching this year, like I do every year, as a big year, and I’m excited for it.”

Hickey shares that enthusiasm, noting that Verizon Business' breadth of experience and access to networked offerings is what allows it to approach new opportunities, like what it found with Monarch Tractor.

“It's cool to see our model shift,” Hickey said. “It isn't a one-way, one-size fits all approach. It's a let me meet you where you want to meet, whether that's in a store, in an indirect agent, direct with a B2B representative, however you would like to do it, but we're able to take the similar services and provide it to you and also expand it to other partners, since we've been around doing it so long.”