Jitendra Singh, the Union Minister of State for the Department of Space, recently announced in Parliament that the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) will incorporate the L1 frequency into all of its future satellites to encourage the use of 'NAVigation with the Indian Constellation' (NavIC), the Indian version of GPS. Singh claims that the upcoming satellites, beginning with NVS-01 and forward, will have an L1 band for use in commercial navigation.

The seven satellites in the NavIC constellation so far employ two frequencies, the L5 and S bands, to transmit positional data. The next NVS-01 satellites, which will take the place of these satellites, will also support L1 frequency. 

Smartwatches and other similarly simple consumer electronics may be able to detect the L1 signal, the earliest and most dependable GPS signal. Therefore, with this band, the use of NavIC in devices for civilian use may rise. India's internal version of GPS is called NavIC.

The $174 million navigation satellite system developed by ISRO was first approved in 2006, but it didn't begin operating until 2018. With its current eight satellites, it can reach places up to 1,500 kilometres from India's borders and can cover the entire country.

The government claims that NavIC is as precise to GPS. In his response to Parliament, Singh stated that 'the performance of NavIC system is on par with the other positioning systems.' NavIC is primarily used for tracking information related to natural disasters, emergency alerts for deep-sea fishermen, and public vehicle tracking. Additionally, the government is promoting its expanded use in cellphones.

 In fact, according to a September article from Reuters, the government's push for tech companies to make cellphones NavIC-compatible 'worried the likes of Samsung, Xiaomi, and Apple, who fear increased costs and interruptions as the transition needs hardware upgrades.' The government reportedly demanded that handsets support both NavIC and GPS by January 2023, which phone manufacturers claimed was an extremely challenging date to accomplish.