Xona's paid GPS rival heads to orbit with six of a planned 258 satellites

At TimeBeat, a company that specializes in electronic timing, Xona's first satellites have a narrow job. Ian Gough, its chief executive, says the initial pilot will let his engineers check and correct the timing their devices provide around the world, according to TechCrunch ^[8].

Six satellites can do that. Xona can open beta tests to real customers once the satellites are in orbit and passing over the mid-latitudes about eight times a day ^[3]. A drifting clock can be corrected on one pass and checked again on the next. A farm robot working a field, or a car crossing a city, needs its position for the whole trip.

The launch is about 2% of the 258 satellites Xona plans for Pulsar ^[12]. Four of the six are similar to the prototype Xona flew last year and use a platform from Aerospace Labs. Xona built the other two entirely at its Burlingame, California headquarters, and those two are meant to be the foundation of the operational constellation ^[4].

The pitch is about autonomy. TechCrunch's premise is that GPS is easy to jam and not precise enough on its own for farm robots or self-driving cars ^[6]. Tyler Reid, the chief technology officer, worked on self-driving cars at Ford and concluded that autonomous vehicles would need a service like Pulsar ^[9]. Brian Manning, the chief executive, believes the signal is strong enough to deter jammers and spoofers ^[15]. The one customer named in the launch coverage is a timing company ^[8].

Manning's case for charging money to compete with a free signal is about hardware. "People think of GPS as a free service, but the market isn't the service. The market's the hardware, and you have billions of devices being sold every year; those things aren't being given away for free," he told TechCrunch ^[7]. The account does not include a price. A team can compare Pulsar with GPS on coverage and accuracy this year, and on cost only later.

In my view, Pulsar is for the timing buyer first. A product team can place itself on two axes. One is how often the product needs a satellite fix: all the time, or a few times a day to correct a clock. The other is what the product does when GPS is jammed: it degrades, or it stops.

Products that need periodic fixes and stop without them can use the beta now, much as Gough's engineers plan to ^[8]. Products that need a fix all the time and stop under jamming are the field robots and autonomous cars in Xona's pitch. For those teams a beta run produces test data, and a production plan waits for full coverage ^[14]. Products that need a fix all the time but degrade gracefully can keep free GPS until Xona sets terms. Products that need only periodic fixes and degrade gracefully have no reason to pay for a second signal yet.