Ordnance Survey (OS) is Britain’s mapping agency and is responsible for the surveying, production, maintenance and marketing of a wide range of geographic information, relied on by government, business and individuals.
GNSS has been used in position, navigation and timing applications for decades and the performance requirements have been steadily increasing over the period. The higher performance levels have also made the service increasingly susceptible to interference, whether that be environmental or manmade; natural or malevolent.
A wide range of augmentation services have evolved to improve the performance and resilience of the GNSS service using different technical approaches. However, none are adequate for emerging applications and new approaches are needed. Several technical approaches such as low earth orbit transmitters and higher sensitivity antennas are also under development but do not completely address these challenges.
OS has a range of capabilities and assets in the GNSS field. Capabilities include Authentication, Validation, and Timing (patent pending) of GNSS signals, while assets include the OSNET network of stations to monitor GNSS signal performance and interference. OS has been evaluating how it can build on its commercial GNSS accuracy augmentation services using these capabilities and assets. As part of this evaluation, it engaged Qi3 to undertake a market assessment to develop and test an Ordnance Survey Value Proposition with potential markets based on its unique GNSS capabilities around “ground-truth” signal measurement.
The project addressed key questions on: market sectors, size / shape of the addressable markets, stage of market development; customer types, value proposition, channels to market; competitive environment; where OS has potential competitive advantage in meeting unmet need; market growth drivers & barriers to entry; and potential first customers.
Qi3’s deliverables included a comprehensive insight into the market opportunities, a detailed structure for the OS value proposition, identification of early adopter markets, and 3 different potential OS service / application offerings for the GNSS market. Ordnance Survey is now evaluating the findings for incorporation into its strategic planning process.
“Qi3’s extensive contacts within the GNSS sector and its deep understanding of the challenges, emerging technologies, and new applications provided us with valuable market insights on the opportunities for OS capabilities in this field. The detailed understanding of evolving market needs and Qi3’s recommendations will be invaluable as we consider the future commercialisation path of this technology.