With the completion of its first base station in Vientiane, China’s BeiDou Navigation Satellite System has officially arrived in Laos.

With support from the National Administration of Surveying, Mapping and Geoinformation of China, Laos's satellite navigation system, which was built using the same blueprint as China’s BeiDou Navigation Satellite System, has formally begun operation.

The system is compatible with the Continuous Operational Reference System (CORS) of the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System, GPS and GLONASS. It provides users across Laos with positioning and timing services. Construction of the base in Vientiane was completed on Aug. 1, and it passed the technical test right away.

The BeiDou Navigation Satellite System is one of four satellite navigation systems in the world. The other three systems are GPS (U.S.), GLONASS (Russia) and Galileo (Europe).