“Right now, our Instrument Landing System (ILS) and the CAT system are all radar controlled. But we are now employing GAGAN, which is a satellite-based technology. We have used it on two or three aircraft in the last three months. The vectors were fixed by satellite movements.”
“Using the satellite technology, we will be able to pull an aircraft into the airport, as opposed to the ground radar. That will take a lot of burden off the ATC operators and ground radar. I see that happening in the next three to five years. So that’s one area where we are using satellite technology in civil aviation,” Scindia added.
The government is likely to make Navigation with Indian Constellation (NavIC) support mandatory for smartphones sold in India. Minister of State for Electronic and Information Technology (MeitY) Rajeev Chandrashekhar has said that all 5G phones would be required to support NavIC by January 1, 2025, The Indian Express (IE) has reported. Earlier, the government had already convinced Apple to support NavIC in some new iPhone 15 models.
"In line with the incentives that we have announced under the IT hardware production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme, where cashback to companies can significantly go up if they use India-designed or -manufactured chips in their systems, we will extend the same idea to the smartphone PLI as well for using domestic chips that support NavIC," Chandrasekhar was quoted in the report.
Apple has extended support for NavIC to some of the new iPhone 15 models, seemingly complying with New Delhi’s push to adopt India’s home-grown alternative to the GPS navigation system.
On the tech specs page of the iPhone 15 Pro and the iPhone 15 Pro Max, Apple says that the new models support NavIC. This is the first time Apple has added support for NavIC to any of its iPhone models. However, the company has not specified which features will be included in the deployment. An Apple spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.