GPS

Canadian DGPS Service to be De-Commissioned

April 9, 2010 By: Eric Gakstatter

CDGPS (Canada-Wide DGPS Service) announced that it will cease operations of their Canadian DGPS service effective March 31, 2011.

According to the announcement, CDGPS has delivered GNSS Augmentation service since October 14, 2003 through a public‐private partnership forged by the Canadian Council on Geomatics (CCOG) with comsat operator SkyTerra (Canada) Inc. Since that time CDGPS has been broadcasting NRCan's wide area GPS∙C correction over SkyTerra’s MSAT communication satellites at 95% availability from coast to coast to coast. The MSAT’s replacement, SkyTerra 1, will be launched between August and October of 2010, necessitating an investment in new infrastructure beyond the scope of CCOG. Until SkyTerra 1 is slotted and certified for full operational capability, CDGPS expects to maintain its current service over the MSAT satellites until March 31, 2011.

Furthermore, NRCan stated that it remains committed to the generation and improvement of its GPS∙C correction beyond that date, and in December 2009 issued a Notice of Commercial Opportunity to broadcast/multicast GPS∙C with the expectation of filling the void left by the de‐commissioning of CDGPS. That solicitation closed on March 19, 2010. Please refer to http://ess.nrcan.gc.ca/intl/bmuuga/ippi/ippi2_e.php for more details on the solicitation. NRCan advises readers to check back in mid‐April for more news.

In other words, CDGPS is turning over the broadcast of GPS∙C corrections to a commercial entity, if any, who are willing to assume the risk and expense of broadcasting the correction service. Being a commercial entity, it's assumed there will be some sort of subscription fee associated with receiving the correction.

By way of background, in March 2007, CDGPS announced they had received funding from federal, provincial and territorial government sponsors to continue its nation-wide broadcasts until at least 2010. At that time, CDGPS stated they would continue providing CDGPS as a free public service in hopes that they could build a solid business model to sustain operations beyond 2010.