Pakistan becomes first country to use China's GPS

BEIJING: Pakistan has become the first foreign country to use China's Beidou navigation system with the company setting up a network covering Karachi.

Beidou was co-developed by China Great Wall Industry Corporation and the Beijing UniStrong Science & Technology Company Limited.

The first stage of Pakistan's geographic positioning network has been finished, Shen Jun, chief scientist of UniStrong, was quoted by the state-run Xinhua news agency as saying.

Beidou is a competitor to US' Global Position System ( GPS).

The Beidou network includes five base stations and one processing center, covering Karachi.

It can provide positioning with a precision of 2 centimetres, while the precision can reach 5 millimetres after post processing and can help in urban planning, surveying, mapping, environmental supervision, disaster relief, traffic monitoring and in other fields.

Shen Jun said the second stage of the network will cover the whole of Pakistan and be the first national high precision Beidou navigation network abroad.