China’s BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS), touted as a rival to the widely-used American GPS, has started providing global services.The positioning accuracy of the system has reached 10 metres globally and five metres in the Asia-Pacific region. Pakistan has become the first country to use the BeiDou system ending its reliance on the Global Positioning System (GPS).It will be the fourth global satellite navigation system after the US GPS, Russia’s GLONASS and the European Union’s Galileo. This satellite is named after the Chinese word for the Big Dipper or Plough constellation [Ursa Major], Beidou has been in the works for over two decades but only became operational within China in 2000 and the Asia-Pacific region in 2012.When complete in 2020, it will have a constellation of 35 satellites to provide global coverage.