China expanded its location services throughout Asia

China's navigation system began providing global positioning services in the Asia-Pacific region from yesterday.

Beidou, the name of China's global positioning system, is a competitor of the US global positioning system GPS. Previously, only the Chinese government and military used the Beidou system to forecast weather, control traffic and support rescue operations.

Illustration of satellites in Beidou global positioning system of China.

But since December 27, China Satellite Positioning Agency will expand its service across China and the Asia-Pacific region, China Daily reported.

Ran Chengqi, director of China Satellite Positioning Agency, said Beijing's immediate goal is to account for 70-80% of the positioning market in China by 2020, while expanding services across the whole. demand in this decade.

China started deploying global positioning system since 2000 to compete with the US GPS global positioning system. Beidou will be capable of global coverage after owning 35 satellites in 2020. Compatible with the US GPS navigation system, Europe's Galileo system and Russia's Glonass system, it allows users to Accurately located within 10m, measuring speeds from 200cm / sec or more and providing timing information with errors of only 2 percent million seconds.

Currently 95% of navigation devices in China use the US GPS navigation system. The chip receives signals from US-made positioning systems that cost many times less than Chinese chips. However, the Chinese government believes that if prices fall, many device manufacturers will want to integrate Chinese chips into products with US chips to increase the scope and accuracy of positioning. .