China’s BeiDou satellite services 100m users in Nigeria, 119 countries

Following the launch of China’s Navigation Satellite System, Beidou, the system now services more than 100 million users and 120 countries and regions within few weeks of its launch, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, Xi Jinping has said.

In a statement, Xi explained that China is willing to share the achievements of the BeiDou system with other countries, and promote the development of global satellite navigation systems, such as the Chinese BDS-3, noting that most of the benefitting countries and regions are within the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

The BRI is a global infrastructure development strategy adopted by the Chinese government in 2013 to invest in nearly 70 countries and international organizations.

The commissioning of the satellite marked a success of the country’s three-step strategy for developing the navigation satellite system and a start of the system’s global service, which began in 2009.

But the constellation deployment was completed one year in advance, the statement added.

The BDS-3 system involves efforts of more than 400 agencies and 300,000 research personnel and technicians, who tackled more than 160 key core technologies, from inter-satellite links to high-precision atomic clocks, and localized the production of over 500 types of equipment component.

All key components of the BDS-3 were manufactured by China, the statement said.

The BDS-3 is now an addition to other global satellites such as the Global Positioning System (GPS, USA); Global GLONSS (Russia), Galileo (EU); QZSS(Japan); and IRNSS(India).

Based on the BDS-3, a high-accuracy augmentation network has been built on the ground with a total of nearly 3,000 ground stations.

The network is able to detect abnormal movements at centimeter level in real-time, and millimeter level in post-analysis.

According to Ran Chengqi, Director General of China Satellite Navigation Office and the spokesperson of the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System, the navigation system has been applied in industries such as transportation, public security, disaster relief, farming and urban governance, and has been integrated into China’s key basic infrastructure construction, including electricity, finance and telecom.