The Complete Remote Work-Camp Connectivity Checklist: Satellite, Private Wireless, Voice, Power, and Failover

A remote camp lives or dies on its network. Drop the link and you lose far more than email. Safety systems go quiet. Haul trucks idle. Crews wait while a supervisor drives an hour to find a usable signal.

Connecting a greenfield site is a whole-stack decision, not a satellite dish bolted to a container. Get one layer wrong and every layer above it underperforms. This checklist walks the full build, layer by layer. An operations or IT lead can use it to plan a site that holds up in northern, off-grid conditions. It maps to the way Galaxy designs mining connectivity and other remote-site deployments.

Key takeaways

• A remote camp network is a stack of seven layers, not a single dish: uplink, on-site distribution, voice, cameras and SCADA, power, failover, and managed monitoring.
• Pick the uplink for the workload, then plan a second path so one outage cannot dark the whole site.
• Segment the network so staff, contractors, operational systems, and morale traffic stay apart for performance and security.
• Power and environment decide uptime as much as the network does. Plan backup power and rugged enclosures from day one.
• Decide who runs it. A managed model covers design, deployment, monitoring, and support, which often separates a site that stays online from one that does not.

The seven layers at a glance

Think of a camp network as a stack. The WAN (Wide Area Network) brings connectivity in. Distribution spreads it across the site. Applications sit on top: voice, cameras, sensors, and user devices. Power and resilience run underneath everything, and a monitoring layer watches the whole thing. Work through them in order and the stack holds together.

Layer 1: Satellite uplink, the WAN

The uplink is your link to the outside world. In most remote regions of Canada, that means satellite, sometimes blended with cellular where coverage exists.

LEO (Low Earth Orbit) services such as OneWeb LEO satellite internet sit roughly 1,200 km up. Latency runs under 100 ms. That is low enough for voice, video, and real-time control. GEO (geostationary) satellites cover wide areas but add lag, which suits bulk transfer over live applications. LTE (Long Term Evolution) cellular helps where a tower is in range.

Three enterprise factors matter most. CIR (Committed Information Rate) sets the bandwidth you can count on, above any short burst speed. A static IP (Internet Protocol) address lets you route cleanly into your corporate WAN or cloud. An SLA (Service Level Agreement) defines the uptime and support you can hold the provider to. Vendor documentation on enterprise LEO service shows how these compare with older GEO links.

Layer 2: On-site distribution

The uplink lands at one point. Distribution carries it across the camp to people, vehicles, and fixed equipment.

Private 5G and LTE give wide-area mobile coverage for a moving workforce and connected vehicles. Nokia has run private wireless in mining since 2011. Its  industrial-grade private wireless now supports autonomous haulage and remote machine control. Wi-Fi handles dense indoor zones like the dining hall and offices. Structured cabling backbones the core buildings. Point-to-point wireless links bridge a pit, a laydown yard, or a satellite camp without trenching fibre.

Plan coverage by use case, not by guesswork. Map where crews work, where vehicles travel, and where sensors sit. Then choose the medium that fits each zone.

Layer 3: Voice

When there is no cellular, voice needs its own plan. People still have to call out, reach the gatehouse, and raise an alarm.

VoIP (Voice over IP) carries phone calls over the same data network. A PBX (private branch exchange) handles extensions and routing. RoIP (Radio over IP) ties two-way radios into that network to support radio communications between field crews, security teams, and remote operations. A dispatcher and a field crew then stay connected across the site. Voice traffic needs priority on the link, or a busy network will chop calls. Build that priority in from the start.

Layer 4: Cameras, SCADA, and IoT

Operational data rides the same network as people, and it carries different stakes.

SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems monitor and control plant and equipment in real time. IoT (Internet of Things) sensors track fuel, temperature, generators, and vehicle telemetry. Cameras cover safety and security. 

Galaxy designs, configures, installs, and connects camera systems to the camp’s managed network, allowing authorized users to monitor the site through a security portal. Position the camera system as part of the overall connectivity solution, alongside communications, SCADA/IoT, and business applications—not just employee internet access. These workloads need steady, low-latency paths and tight access control. A tampered camera feed or a stalled control signal becomes a safety problem.

Layer 5: Power and environmental

A network is only as reliable as the power and shelter behind it. This layer fails first and earns attention last.

A UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) rides through short outages and protects gear from dirty power. Generators carry longer ones, and solar can cut fuel runs at smaller sites. Networking hardware belongs in ruggedized enclosures rated for the climate. Check the IP (Ingress Protection) rating. A figure like IP66 means full dust protection and resistance to heavy water spray. Confirm the temperature range too, since a -40 winter kills consumer-grade gear fast. Plan all of this on day one, because retrofitting power and enclosures on a live site is expensive.

Layer 6: Redundancy and failover

One path is a single point of failure. Resilience means more than one.

Multi-path routing runs two or more uplinks at once, such as LEO plus cellular. SD-WAN (Software-Defined Wide Area Network) logic steers traffic across them and fails over automatically when one degrades. Galaxy’s GiiG (Galaxy Intelligent Internet Gateway) handles that switching so a dropped link does not dark the site.

Resilience also means keeping traffic apart. VLANs (Virtual Local Area Networks) separate staff, contractors, operational systems, and morale users onto their own segments. That stops a contractor’s laptop from reaching SCADA, and it stops a Friday-night streaming spike from starving control traffic. QoS (Quality of Service) then ranks what matters, so voice and safety data get the bandwidth before entertainment does.

Layer 7: Managed monitoring

Hardware on a pad is not a finished network. Someone has to watch it, patch it, and fix it at 3 a.m.

A NOC (Network Operations Center) monitors the site around the clock. It acts before a small fault becomes an outage. This is where a DIY build and a managed service split apart. A DIY setup leans on staff who already have full-time jobs. A remote fault can mean a flight and a lost day. A managed service carries the monitoring, the SLA, and the response. The camp team stays focused on the work the site exists for.

Putting it together: the SmartSite model

You can source and run each layer on its own. Stitching seven of them together across a remote site is the hard part, and the part that breaks.

SmartSite packages the full stack as one managed environment: everything connected, everything managed. It bundles design, deployment, the uplink, distribution, voice, operational systems, power, failover, and monitoring. All of it arrives as a single service with one accountable owner. For an operator weighing build against managed, that single point of accountability is usually the deciding factor.

Checklist table

FAQ

What do you need to set up internet at a remote camp?

You need a satellite or cellular uplink and on-site distribution for people and devices. Add voice, an operational network for cameras and sensors, backup power, automatic failover, and someone to monitor it. The dish is one layer of seven.

What is the best internet option for a remote mining or construction camp?

LEO satellite suits most sites, since low latency supports voice, video, and control. Blend it with a second path, such as cellular, where coverage allows. Match the CIR and SLA to your real workload rather than to a headline speed.

How do you build reliable failover for a remote site?

Run two or more uplinks and let an SD-WAN gateway steer traffic and switch automatically when a link degrades. A gateway like GiiG handles the failover so a single outage does not take the site down.

How do you keep staff, contractors, SCADA, and morale traffic separated on one network?

Use VLANs to split each group onto its own segment. Then apply QoS so voice and operational data get priority. Segmentation protects performance and limits what a compromised device can reach.

How much does remote camp connectivity cost?

Cost depends on site size, the uplink path and CIR, the distribution gear, and power. It also depends on whether you run it yourself or buy a managed service. A managed model folds design, hardware, and support into a predictable operating cost.

What is a managed connectivity service, and why choose it over a DIY setup?

A managed service designs, deploys, monitors, and supports the whole stack under an SLA. It removes the staffing and travel burden of a remote fault. That gap is often the difference between a quick fix and a day of downtime.

Connect your site the right way

A remote camp network is seven layers working as one. Plan the uplink for the workload and distribute it across the site. Protect the operational traffic, back it with power and failover, and put a NOC behind it.

If you are standing up a new site, talk to a Galaxy expert about a remote-site connectivity assessment. They can design and manage the full stack for your conditions. Your crew connects on day one and stays online.