The Department of Transportation’s (DOT) Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA) today published a notice in the Federal Register assessing the current user requirements for the inland (terrestrial) component of the Nationwide Differential GPS (NDGPS) system. This assessment is in preparation for making a recommendation to the National Space-Based Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) Executive Committee on the need to continue to operate inland NDGPS, and to make a decision on funding the NDGPS. If no transportation requirements or other federal user requirements are identified as a result of the needs assessment, and if there are no other Federal or other funding sources willing to sponsor or partner in sponsoring NDGPS, DOT will develop a decommissioning plan for NDGPS. What this means is that there will no longer be full coverage for the existing US Coast Guard Beacon DGPS signal. The Decommissioned sites in this area are Pine River Minnesota, Medora North Dakota, and Clark South Dakota. This would create a huge void for Beacon DGPS signals in Northern, Central, and Western Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota. This would also mean there would be no Base Stations in these areas for OPUS High Accuracy Solutions with Survey Grade GPS users. Examples of products affected by this loss would be Trimble Pro XR/XRS, Trimble GeoBeacon, Trimble Beacon on the Belt, and all Trimble Survey Grade Receivers using OPUS solutions.

This issue needs your attention immediately! We highly encourage you to respond per the attached document. They need to hear from everyone affected by this possible decommissioning scenario. If you have any questions regarding the impact of this Federal Register Notice, please contact Steve Richter with Frontier Precision, Inc. at srichter@frontierprecision.com.

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