The Indian government is planning on making it mandatory for all devices to support homegrown navigation system NavIC (Navigation with Indian Constellation), Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar said on August 14.
He also said that the government plans to provide incentives for making NavIC powered chips in system design.
Chandrasekhar said that all 5G phones should support NavIC by January 1, 2025, and all other phones (L1 band) by December 2025. This comes at a time when the newly launched Apple iPhone 15 has integrated the navigation system developed by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) into its hardware.
"Increasingly we will make it mandatory as it is already in the automobile segment, we will make it almost mandatory that all the devices that use GPS use the NavIC chipsets,” Chandrasekhar said while interacting with media persons.
ISRO's NavIC, which is powered by seven satellites, provides coverage of India and neighboring areas, including the Indian Ocean.
Apart from NavIC, other popular navigation systems include the United States' Global Positioning System (GPS), Russia's Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS), the European Union's Galileo, China's BeiDou, and Japan's Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS).
Chandrasekhar referred to a startup called Accord, which he claimed was the first Indian company to design NavIC chips. He said that the company had already manufactured over 1 million NavIC chips in 28 nanometers.
“In the automotive industry, since there is a chip that is available, there are sufficient reasons for the government to mandate that the trackers in India be NavIC powered,” he said, adding that NavIC can be used in Thailand, Japan, Korea, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. “So nothing prevents the use of the device in an automotive platform,” Chandrasekhar said.
Chandrasekhar also referred to the IT Hardware PLI scheme and mentioned that there are incentives for manufacturers who incorporate Indian-designed chips or Indian-manufactured chips.“So it is conceivable that in the coming future, and it's certainly our goal that as mobile phone designs and our chip design mature and reach the granularity and the sophistication required for mobile devices that the chips themselves that power mobile devices will be NavIC chips,” he said.“When we have a mobile phone grid chip, which is performance, competitive, cost competitive, we will certainly incentivise mobile phone devices to incorporate that as well,” he added.Apple, a few days back, incorporated support for NavIC in select models of its latest iPhone 15 series. This move appears to be in alignment with India's push to promote its homegrown alternative to the GPS navigation system.On the technical specifications page for the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max, Apple has officially announced the inclusion of NavIC support.
A messaging interface is embedded in the NavIC system. This feature allows the command center to send warnings to a specific geographic area. For example, fishermen using the system can be warned about a cyclone.
The constellation consists of 7 active satellites. Three of the seven satellites in constellation are located in geostationary orbit (GEO) and four are in inclined geosynchronous orbit (IGSO).
ISRO will be launching five next generation satellite featuring new payloads and extended lifespan of 12 years. Five new satellites viz. NVS-01, NVS-02, NVS-03, NVS-04 and NVS-05 will supplement and augment the current constellation of satellites.
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