India Is Now The Fifth Country In The World To Have Its Own GPS System

Qualcomm’s subsidiary Qualcomm Technologies, one of the largest semiconductors and companies in telecommunications, has co-operated with ISRO (short for Indian Space Research Organization) to launch support for IRNSS (India’s Regional Navigation Satellite System) and NavIC (Navigation with Indian Constellation) on its future chipset platform lineup.

This cooperation resulted in the first demonstration of NavIC with the Snapdragon Mobile Platform on the 19^th of September. There will be another show at the IMC (India Mobile Congress) taking place from the 14^th to the 16^th of October.

Thanks to NavIC, India is now the fifth nation in the world to possess its own GPS. NavIC, for now, is made up of seven GPS satellites but in the future, this figure will increase to 11. It offers two levels of service for civilian use, the standard positioning service, and the other for authorized users, the restricted service, with encryption.

Durga Malladi, Qualcomm Technologies' Senior Vice President and General Manager said that the company was glas to support India by giving their chipset platform support for NavIC. They would keep working with ISRO to speed up the adoption of NavIC.

Commenting on the cooperation, Dr. K Sivan said that NavIC was an important step toward using space technologies for the development of the nation and the agency would make the tech available to the general mass on the day it was ready. With the collaboration with Qualcomm Technologies, every Indian would be able to enjoy the benefit. He also expressed gratitude to the chip-making company for enabling the demonstration of the technologies for the first time.

Qualcomm Technologies said that NavIC’s support will come to selected chipset platforms of Qualcomm later this year, while NavIC-supported commercial devices will be available in the first six months of 2020.