GPS is an essential part of our daily lives, powering everything from navigation apps to critical infrastructure like emergency services, financial systems, and power grids. But what happens if GPS fails? With increasing threats like jamming and spoofing, a reliable backup solution is crucial.
In this exclusive interview, NextNav CEO Mariam Sorond unveils a new approach to secure Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT). By leveraging 5G technology and innovative spectrum assets, this solution offers a powerful terrestrial complement and backup to traditional satellite-based GPS—enhancing reliability, security, and coverage. And with regulatory efforts underway, the future of resilient PNT is closer than we think.
Watch now to learn how NextNav is shaping the future of GPS security and connectivity.
GPS vulnerabilities are on the rise—what happens if it is disrupted ? The latest 5G-powered solution aims to secure navigation, infrastructure, and national security. Don’t miss this exclusive interview with NextNav CEO Mariam Sorond on the future of PNT. Watch now!
Steve Saunders:
Hey, Mariam, it's nice to meet you and congratulations on your role at NextNav.
Mariam Sorond:
Thank you, Steve. I'm here to transform our business to solve a very important problem, and that is a national security concern that we have about a backup and complement to GPS.
Steve Saunders:
Well, that's a very topical issue, obviously, and my understanding of NextNav is that you're working on a ground-based or terrestrial PNT service, which could complement and back up GPS to avoid really a disastrous situation if GPS went down. First of all, what is PNT? What does PNT stand for?
Mariam Sorond:
PNT stands for Positioning, Navigation and Timing, and these positioning and timing references are extremely, extremely important and work across not only our daily use of finding maps and getting to places, but it's also in our critical infrastructure. It's used by emergency responders, it's in our water supplies, electric grids, financial institutions, data centers.
Steve Saunders:
So how would you complement GPS using PNT?
Mariam Sorond:
So first of all, let's talk about what are the vulnerabilities of GPS? It is space-based. It's served by satellites. One of the things that satellites have a vulnerability as besides being satellites, is the fact that by the time that their signals get to Earth, they become really weak. So it becomes extremely easy to disrupt them, jam them, and spoof them. A terrestrial-level signal is much stronger and it overcomes all these vulnerabilities of jamming and spoofing. Jamming is happening everywhere due to various reasons, in any country this is happening and sometimes it's even unintentional jamming.
Steve Saunders:
Tell us about the solution. How does it work?
Mariam Sorond:
GPS is a free service, so it becomes extremely difficult to compete with a free service on a monetization scale. Right? And then the second is what technology? So what we did is we're leveraging 5G. 5G has a standards-based signal called a Positioning Reference Signal or PRS that can be used to then compute positioning and timing data that is needed. And then basically what we're saying is that because it's economically hard to do just a positioning-based wide-scale terrestrial network, let's take our spectrum assets, which NextNav has, we have incredible spectrum. It's in 900 megahertz. It's below one gigahertz. It's very scarce and limited across the world, and it penetrates walls and buildings.
And so it's got great coverage characteristics. Let's take that spectrum. Let's make it viable for 5G. Okay? So an operator builds it and uses it for their broadband pipe, and then we enable that PRS signal and take that and provide positioning and timing. So it becomes innovative in the sense that you're not only using a technology that's very wide scale and it's used commercially all over the world, but you're also solving the economics problem because the spectrum is what is going to incentivize 5G operators to build this for broadband use. So we need an update of the rules, which is why we're working with the Federal Communications Commissions in the US, with the FCC. We've been working this last year with them to get those rules updated.
Steve Saunders:
Do you have to work with the regulatory authorities around the rest of the world in order for this to work, though?
Mariam Sorond:
Well, we are now solving the problem for the United States, but we would love to partner globally with anyone who's interested to come and partner with us to solve this problem internationally as well.
Steve Saunders:
And what is your hope as far as the timing for your program and getting the regulatory approval just to solve the problem in the United States? And then on the commercial side of it, how would you monetize what you're doing? Would you monetize or would the new layer of positioning ride for free over the new 5G capacity, which you're enabling? How does it work as far as a business?
Mariam Sorond:
It's very hard to monetize on competing with a free service, which is GPS. Monetization plan is going to very much rely on broadband capabilities, and we will be working through our partners and the FCC to identify how can we make PNT available as a backup and compliment. But we first have to go through this first step of getting the spectrum rules updated.
Steve Saunders:
Are you optimistic, Mariam?
Mariam Sorond:
I'm extremely optimistic. I come to work with a passion every day. The mission to solve a national security concern, it gives me that purpose. Incredibly smart team, we've got incredible spectrum assets, we've got incredible technology, and we're doing this in the United States with a proposal with no taxpayer dollars. Well, thank you Steve. And I want to just leave you with this thought that as we're going through all these mobile world congress evolutions and seeing all this great technology that was all part of 5G, then to 6G, open RAN, edge, and now AI, I think that's amazing, and I'm so happy to see the evolution, but I just want to remind everyone that we, in order for all of these technologies, all of these innovations to be successful, we need to make sure our fundamentals are there intact. And positioning, navigation and timing is a fundamental to many of these innovations.
Steve Saunders:
It sounds like you're really on a mission there, and thank you for talking to us today about this.