There are standards that the world follows and then there are the Chinese who create their own standards. The examples are many. While the rest of the world clings on to Google, they have their own homegrown search engine, the popular Baidu. Thanks to such a large population, companies moving in the wrong lane (when compared to the rest if the world) are able to survive in China because they have enough people to use their services.
In the latest example, China has launched a new satellite in to the orbit on Sunday. Nothing wrong with that. But this particular satellite happens to be the 8th of a series of satellites that would go on to form its own GPS like navigation network. These series of satellites are known as “Beidou” (Compass in Chinese). There are more launches expected in the future and the service is only expected to start by 2020. By then there would be around 30 satellites in orbit – nearly equal to the 32 that GPS currently has.
One thing that would be different for the Beidou is that it would be able to provide global coverage and would not be limited to China -effectively turning it into a competitor of GPS. But then as of now, we don’t see many people outside of China abandoning GPS in favor of Beidou. That said, lets hope it does come up with some kickass feature that would make GPS look outdated.
Now, having two different options for satellite navigation isn’t such a bad idea, is it?
