I was interested reading in a rural newspaper (NZ Farmers Weekly OCT 9) recently that Spark has partnered with NIWA and some industry NGOs to develop a WAN that would not be reliant on the existing mobile network. The idea seems to be, that a multitude of cheap sensors on the farm would be connected to the internet (of things) by using this network, which would be cheaper and provide better coverage than using the "mobile towers". The article was light on technical detail.

Does anyone know how this will be achieved?