India’s global positioning system: NavIC
Have you heard of ‘genericization’? In simple parlance, it is when a trademark or brand name—typically against the wishes of the trademark’s owner has, due to its fame or significance, come to be used interchangeably or synonymously with a broad range of goods or services. Instances of it in our lives include:
- Messaging has become Whatsapp.
- The photocopy has become Xerox.
- GPS has become Google Maps.
This article is going to revolve around how the recognition of global brands by identifying them as basic services has hampered the acknowledgement of Indian initiatives along the same lines.
The Global Positioning System, or GPS
Nowadays, navigation is referred to often by this phrase. And when you tell somebody to use a “GPS,” you’re really telling them to find their way. However, the global positioning system isn’t technically an international organisation. The US government is in charge of both ownership and operation.
And they aren’t the only ones who develop such things. Other satellite-based global navigation systems carry out essentially the same functions. There is the Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS) of Russia, the BeiDou Navigation System of China, the Galileo system of the European Union, and the NavIC system of India. Not precisely a global system, our navigation satellite system. In India, you may determine the longitude and latitude of any object equipped with a receiver.
What is NavIC?
The Indian Space Research Organization created the NavIC, or Navigation with Indian Constellation, an independent stand-alone navigation satellite system (ISRO). Eight satellites make up NavIC, which covers all of India’s landmass up to 1,500 km (930 miles) from its borders.
The use of NavIC is currently restricted. It is used for tracking and delivering information about natural disasters, providing emergency warning alerts to fishermen travelling into the deep sea where there is no terrestrial mass communication, and public vehicle tracking in India.
Although NavIC received approval in 2006, it didn’t begin full operations until 2018 when seven satellites began to cover the entire country of India. Three geostationary satellites and four geosynchronous satellites, all in far higher orbits, are part of the NavIC constellation.
Due to the two frequency bands (L5-band and S-band) provided by NavIC satellites, the system is comparatively more accurate than GPS. In the main service area, the NavIC System is anticipated to have location accuracy that is better than 20 metres.
India promoting NavIC
According to India, the purpose of NavIC was to end reliance on foreign satellite systems for navigation service needs, especially for “strategic sectors.”
According to India, relying on systems like GPS and GLONASS may not always be safe because they are administered by the defence departments of various countries and there is a chance that civilian services could be restricted or refused.
The producers of new smartphones have been asked to incorporate support for India’s NavIC navigation system, including Apple, Samsung, and Xiaomi.
To make NavIC a common service on par with GPS, India has aggressively promoted it. NavIC was created in part because India wanted to lessen its reliance on foreign systems like GPS (which is owned by the US) by developing its own technology. Connectivity to foreign government-controlled global navigation satellite systems is not always assured in hostile environments.
Prior to that, India wants IT companies to make their products compliant with the new standard in order to help it increase NavIC coverage abroad.
In July, the NavIC Grand Challenge for Indian startups was introduced by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) and ISRO. The goal of the challenge was to encourage the use of NavIC as a geo-positioning tool.
Tech firms are also concerned about the frequency at which the NavIC system operates. The L5 satellite frequency is now used by the Indian government but much less frequently by cellphones (Apple now supports L5 with iPhone 14 Pro and Apple Watch Ultra). India is being urged by the firms to use the L1 frequency, which is the same as the GPS frequency.
Conclusion
Many nations utilise GPS to precisely track and monitor the location and path of navigation, but some nations are investigating, testing, and installing satellites to improve their positioning capabilities.
As an illustration, Russia has completely operationalized GLONASS (Globalnaya Navigazionnaya Sputnikovaya Sistema, or Global Navigation Satellite System).
The European Union began rolling out the Galileo system in 2016 and intends to shortly finish the system of about 24 satellites. China’s BeiDou, or BDS, was officially launched in 2020, while Japan’s QZSS (Quasi-Zenith Satellite System) services were launched in 2018 with four operational satellites.
