In the last few days a notice has appeared on the product page for the RTK Facet L-Band receiver ( SparkFun RTK Facet L-Band - SparkFun Electronics which says:
" Important! The PointPerfect L-Band subscription compatible with this product will not be operational past December 31, 2025."
Do you have any more information about this? Is uBlox shutting down the L-band service altogether? Or is it transitioning to a new L-Band service that won’t be compatible with the Facet? If so, is it possible to apply a software upgrade the Facet (or a NEO-9DS) in the future?
It looks like u-blox is implementing different flavors of PointPerfect instead (optimized for different scenarios) to me…I’d presume that the regular PointPerfect subscription will be deprecated and you can choose either “Live” or “Flex” to continue receiving PP correction service based on your needs
If anyone knows more please feel free to chime in!
We have very little information other than the L-Band North American signal will be shutoff at the end of 2025. We wanted to set expectations and be as up front with our customers as possible, hence the note.
PointPerfect Global L-Band (compatible with the ZED-X20P) is supposed to be available someday, but we don’t have a firm date. The X20P firmware doesn’t support yet either so I’m guessing well into 2026.
If so, is it possible to apply a software upgrade the Facet (or a NEO-9DS) in the future?
From what I’ve been told, the NEO-D9S will not be compatible with PointPerfect Global L-Band, rendering it obsolete.
Well that’s going to be aggravating..
Disappointing to people who adopted the service only to be let down by abandonment from uBlox.
Just going to make these services a harder sell, especially against Galileo HAS
Any product integrator will have to think “long-and-hard” about building a large Fleet around a ThingStream Service.
It appears to be a Marketing Decision (just my personal opinion) based on the new service plans and tactics. Note: that’s pointed at U-Blox/ThingStream, not SparkFun
U-Blox divested it’s Cellular business, has a new CFO, and a strange partnership with TopCon.
The proposed PointPerfect Global L-Band has a 2-minute convergence time for 10 cm accuracy…that’s not a viable replacement at all for many industries that have adopted L-Band Corrections.
A ~6 month notice for ending our existing L-Band Service is a slap in the face to ThingStream’s existing customers in the US, and should be a warning for any potential customers and integrators. Quick decisions by bean-counters can cause serious uncertainty for customers with long-term plans.
I’ve felt like a complete idiot for the past 2 months.
[/end Rant]
I got a bit more information: the NEO-D9S is not the issue. The type of encoded data that the L-Band Global network outputs will not be compatible with the ZED-F9P, only the ZED-X20 series will have the processing capabilities to work with the new data.
If anyone has any bright ideas for uses of a NEO-D9S, I will gladly send you a few box of them to play with.
Well it’s a general purpose Inmarsat modem, as I recall some of the initial setting pulled Trimble data. Nordian is still selling their services in South America.
I think the SAW filter in the NEO-M9N precludes them from pulling the North American L-Band, but there are UBX-M9 based modules that aren’t so limited.
So presumably it’s a non-SPARTN implementation. One could deploy an ZED-X20P base-station with L-Band that could self-survey accurately, anywhere, and then have it push out RTCM3 to it’s local rovers including ZED-F9P and ZED-X20P devices.
