NEW DELHI The Indian government is pushing for phone makers to allow it to support its NavIC navigation system in new phones sold in the country from next year, a move that has spooked the industry due to additional costs and tight time frame.
Below are the details of NavIC's inception, why India wants smartphone makers to adopt it, and how the system compares to other global or regional navigation systems.
NavIC, or Navigation with Indian Constellation, is an independent stand-alone navigation satellite system developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation ISRO NavIC and was approved in 2006 at a cost of $174 million. It was expected to be completed by late 2011 but only became operational in 2018.
NavIC consists of eight satellites and covers the entire of India's landmass and up to 1,500 km 930 miles from its boundaries.
NavIC's use is limited. It is used in public vehicle tracking in India, for emergency warnings to fishermen venturing into the deep sea, where there is no terrestrial network connectivity, and for tracking and providing information related to natural disasters.
It's the next step India is pushing for, to enable it in phones.
The serviceable area covered by these systems is the main difference. GPS caters to users across the globe, and its satellites circle the earth twice a day, while NavIC is currently used in India and adjacent areas.
Like GPS, there are three more navigation systems that have global coverage - Galileo from the European Union, Russia-owned GLONASS and China's Beidou. QZSS, operated by Japan, is another regional navigation system covering the Asia-Oceania region, with a focus on Japan.
India's 2021 satellite navigation draft policy stated that the government will work to expand coverage from regional to global to ensure availability of NavIC signal in any part of the world.
The Indian government said in August that NavIC is as good as the GPS of the United States in terms of position accuracy.
India says NavIC was designed to remove dependence on foreign satellite systems for navigation service requirements, particularly for strategic sectors. India says that systems such as GPS and GLONASS may not always be reliable, as they are operated by the defence agencies of their nations and it is possible that civilian services can be degraded or denied.
NavIC is an indigenous positioning system that is under Indian control. The government said in 2021 that there was no risk of the service being withdrawn or denied in a given situation.
India wants to encourage ministries to use NavIC applications to promote local industry engaged in developing indigenous NavIC-based solutions.