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© DC Studio/AdobeStock “GPS is amazing service, but it is a government service ? rst, and that means the government gets the goodies. Civilians certainly get a service, but they don’t get access to all the toys that the

DOD side has. And one of those toys that the DOD has today is a protected service, one that’s encrypted and authenticated.” – Brian Manning, CEO, XONA that’s not good enough when you need to know, ‘am I on the

With this new satellite network, what exactly will XONA right side of the road’? That’s the system that we’re building. be offering?

The best way to think of it is super GPS.

So can you give a ‘by the numbers’ look at XONA today?

There are a couple big challenges that you can boil down

If you look at some of the other incredibly impactful tech- into three major pain points: precision, power and protection. nologies in history; the iPhone with 2-3 billion iPhones sold; From a precision standpoint, it’s going from something that

Facebook and 3 billion users – there are more than 5.5 billion is several meters down to several centimeters. The power and people in the world that have access to the internet, and there’s protection side are fairly closely tied that from a protection more than 6 billion active GPS devices. It’s on a scale that very standpoint. GPS is amazing service, but it is a government few, if any, technologies have ever gotten to. That’s what gets service ? rst, and that means the government gets the goodies. us excited is that all of these are looking for better performance Civilians certainly get a service, but they don’t get access to or would like to have better performance in different areas. all the toys that the DOD side has. And one of those toys that

That’s something that attracted me – and I think attracted a the DOD has today is a protected service, one that’s encrypted lot of the people we have here at XONA – the ability to make and authenticated. Ours will be the ? rst civilian available ser- impact on a global scale. So we’re about ? ve years old. We’re vice that has that encryption and protection layer, which is about 25 people. We just closed our latest funding round so we incredibly important, especially as you move into things that are growing and hiring. We launched our ? rst satellite in 2022, are not just safety critical, that it’s human lives on the line, but and now we’re on track to launch our next, the ? rst production also even just liability critical. class one coming up next year. And then from there we’ll be On the power side, power is tied to protection. There’s a lot growing up and building up a system to get the full service up of jamming and spoo? ng, especially in the Black Sea areas and active within the next few years. around Russia right now. If you’re in the middle of the open sea and all you’ve got is GPS and someone starts jamming it

When you say you’re going to be full service, what does or sending out fake signals, it can put you in a pretty bad situ- that look like?

ation. Our signals are substantially stronger with some other

We can start services with basic capabilities available in a protection characteristics built in to make them more resilient few areas of the world with less than 20 satellites. The ? nal to interferences. system is about 250.

Scan the QR code to watch the full interview with XONA CEO Brian Manning on Maritime Reporter TV.

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