The United States’ GPS system, operated by the Defense Department, provides information around navigation and positioning as we open the app. However, timing is important in GPS, which offers devices and smartphones decision timing. It ensures that the processes are synced. Moreover, China announced GPS completion by 2020.
The Department of Transportation, under congressional mandate, added to the Defense authorization bill for the fiscal year 2018. It ran an evaluation of alternatives to GPS that serves as a backup to our existing infrastructure.
Among 11 companies considered in the study were startups that raised around $26 million round in 2019. NextNav has banked $300 million, including $120 million from Hellens Systems.
The full report from DOT is 457 pages long and has 14 measures, which the researchers explored these PNT platforms.
The summary is that there are a number of companies that offer decent backup capabilities for the GPS system. However, their costs vary from each other.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/clappstar/NextNav came out furthest ahead according to researchers who said that “All vendors demonstrated at least some PNT performance of value, but only one vendor. NextNav demonstrated in all scenarios.”
The DOT researchers stated that “None of these systems have navigation and backup capabilities provided by augmentation and the GPS.” The GPS fulfills “a big universe of technological and navigational technologies. This added new things to this structure.
However, the costs are quite complicated to determine. Due to the way that different positioning systems operate, the variable and fixed costs for each system depending on the desired coverage area. The researchers couldn’t get an opinion on the cost-effectiveness of the different systems. However, they offer initial data that provide data that provide insight.
Due to the importance of GPS and the desire for companies and the government to make alternatives, VCs have lost money on the PNT sector in recent years. Now, we have some data on which vendors pick up steam in terms of utility and functionality.
