北斗卫星导航服务一周年

Chinese officials say the country's homegrown satellite navigation system, Beidou, is starting to come into its own.

They made the comment as the system marks its first anniversary as a free public service across Asia.

CRI's Li Jing has the story.

Report: Beidou, which means the Big Dipper in Chinese, has been providing accurate and stable services to Asia-Pacific users since China launched it a year ago.

It has improved its accuracy to an error margin as low as five meters, down from 10, and can be further improved to be within centimeters.

That will make it competitive with the US Global Positioning System.

Ran Chengqi, director of the Satellite Navigation Office, says the Beidou satellite navigation system is benefiting civilians and the military.

"The Beidou navigation industry is starting to take shape after one year of operation. It has been used in many areas including transportation, fisheries, hydrological monitoring, weather forecasting, disaster relief and car navigation. It is yielding wide economic and social benefit."

Ran says Beidou has functionality and performance "comparable" to the GPS system, but is cheaper.

It is estimated that the market for transport, weather, and telecom spin-off services from Beidou could be worth 200 billion yuan, or more than 30 billion US dollars, by 2015.

Ran also says Beidou is expected to provide a global service by 2020, with another 40 satellites to be launched.

Meanwhile, China is encouraging other countries in Asia to adopt the free service, as the United States does with its civilian GPS network.

"We have established cooperation with a number of countries in the Asia-Pacific region, in agriculture, disaster relief, communications and tourism. China and Pakistan signed an agreement in May during Premier Li Keqiang's visit, which is the first governmental deal for Beidou."

Stations are being built in Pakistan to improve service there, and Thailand has signed up to use Beidou for disaster forecasting.

Beidou went into service in 2011 with a 16-satellite network over the Asia-Pacific region, but it had been restricted to the Chinese military and the government.

It opened to the public in Asia-Pacific region since 2012.

There are four major navigation systems worldwide now: Beidou, the US GPS, Galileo in Europe and Russia's Glonass.

GPS was put into service in the 1960s and its satellite network covers the globe, while Glonass had full global coverage by 2011 and Galileo is still under construction.

For CRI, this is Li Jing.