Russia negotiates to place Glonass satellites: Vietnam has more options

Up to now, Vietnam has mainly used US GPS satellites. Now that Russia is negotiating to bring in Glonass, users will benefit from having a competitive product.

Associate Professor Dr. Doan Minh Chung, Director of the Institute of Space Technology, made such a comment in response to the information that the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) is negotiating with four countries: Vietnam, Cuba, Nicaragua and China to set up a station to correct signals from the Glonass satellite navigation system.

Good opportunity

Glonass is a Russian Global Positioning System (GPS), designed for both civilian and military purposes. It allows users to determine their location in real time.

Glonass along with GPS are two global navigation satellite positioning systems, to help determine the exact location of an object on earth.

In particular, the future Glonass system will provide position determination results with an error level of only millimeters.

According to Dr. Doan Minh Chung, this is a good opportunity for users in Vietnam to compare and choose. Users in Vietnam have the opportunity to use the global positioning system.

"The world currently has many positioning satellites. For a long time, we have been using 24 US GPS satellites to determine coordinates in many fields (navigation, science to locate signal measurement points...) with receivers that allow us to determine our position to see where the experimental location is on Earth. Or like when a storm or flood hits a country, we can take satellite images in that area to get coordinates.

Telecommunication positioning satellites will determine. That means when determining a certain location on earth, there will be coordinate grids. These coordinates are determined by positioning satellites.

Nowadays, many countries are also developing satellite positioning systems. In Vietnam, scientists have long been used to the US GPS system, but now with Glonass, it means there are more products to choose from," Associate Professor Chung said.

That means when Glonass enters Vietnam, there will be more products competing with US GPS and users can take advantage of the advantages of each different system.

"Consumers will benefit from having more competitive products on the market. It is even possible to develop applications from this satellite system," said Dr. Chung.

GLONASS global positioning system

Russia wants Vietnam to use Glonass satellites

Dr. Chung also said that previously, in the cooperation framework between the Russian Space Center and the Ministry of Science and Technology, there was also mention of bringing Glonass to Vietnam.

"They want Vietnam to gradually use Glonass satellites to locate points like GPS and later maybe even put it into mobile phones...", Dr. Chung shared.

Accordingly, regarding this cooperation, Mr. Chung personally thinks: this is a good opportunity.

"The problem is how the market supplies and Russia needs to cooperate with the Ministry of Information and Communications to build receiving stations in Vietnam so that Vietnamese people can gradually use Glonass at the same time as GPS," said Dr. Chung.

According to Mr. Chung, users will soon be able to use both positioning systems at the same time to complement each other for more accurate positioning.

"The problem is that the Ministry of Information and Communications must also negotiate and cooperate with partners to sell cheap receivers like GPS so that users can use them," Dr. Chung acknowledged.

Having visited Russia's Glonass system, Dr. Chung said the disadvantage is that the device is a bit large, so it will take time to gain market share. "There needs to be a process, not forcing users to use it immediately," Mr. Chung said.

To use Glonass, Vietnam does not need to prepare any additional infrastructure because they will simply sell the equipment and users can use it in parallel with existing positioning systems.

"The important thing is that if Russia wants to invest, it must build a receiving station and take care of customers. If they find it good, they will try it. If it's not good, people will definitely not buy it," said Dr. Chung.

According to Dat Viet Newspaper