IT for remote camps
and field operations.
Exploration camps, oilfield camps, silviculture camps, construction camps: temporary or seasonal sites where a crew lives and works, often hours past the last cell tower. We have set up and supported IT at remote camps, mine sites, and field offices from our base in Prince George. This page covers the camp itself: the internet, the two networks that share it, the shared devices, the generator-fed power, and the paperwork that has to make it back to town.
Connectivity is the foundation. Everything else rides on it.
A camp without a working link runs on paper timesheets and a superintendent driving two hours to send an email. Getting the link right is the first job, and it is mostly won or lost before anyone powers up a dish.
Starlink Business as the primary link.
Beyond LTE coverage, Starlink Business is the default answer. Priority data keeps you ahead of consumer traffic on busy cells, the business tier gets real support when something fails, and the throughput is enough to run a whole camp if the network behind it is built properly. We spec the right dish and plan, manage the account, and monitor the link after we leave.
Site survey, skid mounts, and seacan roofs.
Dish placement decides whether the link works. We survey for the tree lines and ridgelines that eat the view of the sky, then mount on what the camp actually has: skid frames, seacan roofs, ballasted poles. Camps move, so mounts are built to move with them, and cable runs into the office trailer are routed to survive snow load and equipment traffic.
LTE failover where any signal exists.
Plenty of camps sit at the ragged edge of cell coverage. A directional antenna and an LTE router can turn one flickering bar into a usable second path, so check-ins and phones keep working while the dish is down in a storm. Where there is genuinely nothing, we plan on-site spares instead of pretending a backup exists.
Bandwidth management when 40 people share one dish.
The link that runs the camp is the same link the crew streams on after shift. Without traffic shaping, one movie night starves the timesheet sync and drops the phones. We set priorities so operations traffic always wins, and the crew network gets a fair share of the rest.
One dish, two networks.
Every camp needs two networks on the same link: one that runs the operation and one that keeps the crew sane. Keeping them apart is a security decision, not a nice-to-have.
The operations network.
The office trailer, ops tablets, printers, cameras, and VoIP phones live here. Managed devices only, firewall rules to match, and priority over everything else on the link, because the daily production report and the safety paperwork depend on it.
Crew welfare Wi-Fi.
Wi-Fi in the sleeping quarters is a retention issue now. Crews expect to call home and stream on days off, and camps that cannot offer that lose people to camps that can. We build it as its own VLAN and SSID with sensible quotas, so it works well without touching anything that matters.
Why the wall between them matters.
Crew phones and personal laptops are unmanaged, unpatched, and full of apps nobody vetted. On a flat network, one compromised device can reach the camp office machines and everything on them. Segmentation means the worst day on the crew network stays on the crew network.
Cybersecurity →Devices and accounts for crews that rotate.
Camps do not have stable headcount. Crews swap on rotation, contractors come and go mid-season, and hardware is shared. Device management has to assume all of it.
Shared tablets and laptops, done properly.
The camp tablet with one communal password is how data goes missing and nobody knows who signed off on what. Intune shared device mode gives each worker their own sign-in and session, and nothing personal piles up on the machine between rotations.
Onboarding and offboarding at rotation speed.
Accounts and app access are ready before the crew flies in, and access is cut the day someone leaves for the last time. On a two-and-one rotation there is no room for a three-day ticket queue, so we tie the process to your crew schedule.
Enrolled before it ships.
Devices enrol in Intune before they leave town, so apps, Wi-Fi profiles, and policies arrive configured. A tablet that reaches camp half set up stays half set up for the season, because nobody there has the bandwidth to finish the job.
Sign-in that tolerates a dead link.
Cloud identity with cached credentials, so a satellite outage does not lock the whole camp out of its own laptops. Workers sign in offline, keep working on local copies, and everything syncs when the link comes back. We test this before deployment, not during the first outage.
Safety comms and the physical reality.
Camp IT lives on generator power, in dust, and through mornings at -30. Systems that people's safety depends on get designed for the site as it is, not the site as the brochure imagines it.
Check-in systems and backup comms.
Work-alone check-ins and journey management cannot depend on a single link. We set up layered communications: internet first, satellite messengers and radio as fallback, with a written procedure for when the primary path is down. The test is simple: if the dish dies at 2 a.m., can the camp still reach the outside world?
VoIP over satellite, honestly.
VoIP over Starlink works well most of the time. Latency is usually low enough for natural conversation, but jitter during weather and satellite handoffs is real, and calls will occasionally stutter. We configure QoS so voice wins on the link, and never make VoIP the only voice path where safety calls matter.
Rugged deployment guide →Generator power, dust, and -30 mornings.
Camp power is dirty. Generator switchovers brown out and spike everything on the circuit, so line-interactive UPS units go on anything that matters. Dust gets into open cases, so gear lives in sealed or filtered enclosures. Hardware is chosen for cold starts, because consumer equipment that spent a night at -30 often does not boot again.
Plan for gear that ships back broken.
Some percentage of camp hardware comes back at season end dead, soaked, or simply missing. We plan for it: spares staged on site, standard images so a replacement is a swap rather than a rebuild, and asset tracking so you know what actually came home. Budgeting for attrition beats being surprised by it.
Remote-site IT for forestry →Data sync and security without a server room.
There is no domain controller at camp, and there should not be. The camp office runs on cloud services that tolerate a link that comes and goes, with security that does not depend on anything racked on site.
Reports, timesheets, and safety docs that sync.
Daily production reports, timesheets, and safety paperwork live in SharePoint and OneDrive, get edited offline, and sync when the link allows. Large transfers run overnight when the crew network is quiet. Head office sees yesterday's numbers in the morning without anyone emailing spreadsheets.
Shared terminals that clean up after themselves.
The common computer in the office trailer gets locked down to what it is for: shared PC or kiosk mode, no saved passwords, sessions that clear between users. Convenient enough that people use it, restricted enough that it is not a liability.
Contractor devices with a place to go.
Contractors need internet, not access to your files. Their devices land on guest access by default, and anything that genuinely needs operations data gets checked and enrolled first. The policy is written down and enforced by the network, not by memory.
Security with no server on site.
Identity lives in Entra ID with MFA, endpoints run EDR that reports home whenever the link is up, and everything created at camp backs up automatically. Nothing on site is ever the only copy of anything, so a stolen laptop or a flooded trailer is an expense, not a crisis.
What North Star delivers at camp.
We have deployed and supported camp IT for the sectors our other industry pages cover: oilfield, mining, and forestry. Wherever the camp sits, the delivery looks like this.
Camp connectivity, surveyed and installed.
Site survey, Starlink Business provisioning, mounting, LTE failover where a signal exists, and monitoring after we drive away. Deployment is usually one day on site at our published $720 day rate plus mileage, with hardware quoted per site.
Managed Network →Segmented camp networks.
UniFi access points, switches, and gateways with separate VLANs for operations and crew welfare, firewall rules between them, and traffic shaping that keeps the important things fast. Built so we can manage it remotely for the rest of the season.
Rotating-crew device management.
Intune enrollment before shipping, shared device mode for camp tablets and laptops, onboarding and offboarding tied to your rotation schedule, and staged spares so a broken device is a swap, not a ticket that waits on a plane.
Managed IT →Managed IT for the camp office.
Helpdesk for camp and head office staff, Microsoft 365, backup, and endpoint security under one per-user monthly price. Our tiers and real numbers are published, so you can budget a season before talking to anyone.
See published pricing →Field dispatch across BC, Alberta, and Yukon.
Remote-first support handles most issues between visits, and field engineers dispatch from Prince George when hands on site are genuinely needed. Rates are published, and we are honest about travel time to your site before you commit.
Book a free assessment →Tools and platforms we use at camp.
The stack we deploy and manage for remote camps and field operations.
Starlink Business
High-throughput satellite connectivity for camps beyond LTE. We spec, install, manage the account, and monitor the link.
UniFi
Access points, switches, and gateways for segmented camp networks we can manage remotely all season.
Microsoft Intune
Device management, shared device mode, and pre-deployment enrollment for rotating crews and shared camp hardware.
Microsoft 365 + Entra ID
Cloud identity, email, and document sync that tolerates an intermittent link. No domain controller at camp, ever.
VoIP over satellite
Phone service configured for satellite latency with QoS, loss-tolerant codecs, and a non-internet fallback path.
Common questions about camp IT.
Can you get internet at a camp with no cell coverage?
Yes. Starlink Business works anywhere with a clear view of the northern sky, which covers nearly every camp we have been asked about in BC, Alberta, and Yukon. The work is in the details: dish placement clear of tree cover, a solid mount on a skid or seacan, clean power, and a network behind it that shares the bandwidth sensibly. Where any LTE signal exists at all, we add it as a failover path with a directional antenna.
What does camp internet actually cost?
Starlink hardware and service are public list prices. As of mid 2026 the standard dish runs around $499 CAD, the flat high performance dish is in the low thousands, and business grade priority service plans typically run from roughly $140 to $700 or more per month depending on the priority data block. Verify current prices with Starlink, they change. On top of that, our deployment is usually one day on site at our published $720 day rate plus mileage, and mounting hardware and networking gear are quoted per site.
How fast can a camp be online?
Honestly, days, not hours. Starlink hardware ships in roughly one to two weeks unless a local supplier has stock, and networking gear is similar. Once everything is in hand, a standard single dish camp is typically online after one day on site. Weather and road access are the wildcards. A January install up a snowed-in forest service road takes longer than a July one, and we will tell you that before we quote it.
Can crew welfare Wi-Fi be separated from the operations network?
Yes, and it should be. We run separate VLANs and SSIDs on the same hardware: an operations network for the office trailer, cameras, and work devices, and a crew network for personal phones and streaming. Firewall rules keep crew traffic away from operations, and bandwidth shaping stops an off-shift movie night from starving the systems the camp actually runs on.
Do you support Alberta oilfield camps?
Yes. We dispatch field engineers from Prince George across BC, Alberta, and Yukon, and remote support covers most day-to-day issues between visits. For the well site side of oilfield work, SCADA networks and rugged field devices, see our oilfield services page. This page covers the camp itself: where the crew lives, eats, and does paperwork.
Who fixes it when something breaks mid-rotation?
First line is remote. Most failures are software, account, or configuration problems we can fix over the link, and we build camp networks so we can manage them without being there. Second line is a designated person at camp walking through physical checks with us, plus spares we pre-stage on site, because a router swap takes an hour and a shipment takes a week. If it genuinely needs hands on site, we dispatch at $95 per hour standard or $143 per hour emergency, plus mileage.
Getting a camp online this season?
Book a 30-minute scoping call. Tell us where the camp is, how many people are on rotation, and when it needs to be live. We will tell you honestly what it takes and what it costs. No pressure.
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