OREANDA-NEWS. April 14, 2011. A Swedish firm has become the first known foreign company to use Russian positioning technology GLONASS, in a sign that the system could become a credible challenge to established U.S. rival GPS.

Sweden's Swepos, a national network of satellite reference stations which provides data for real-time positioning with metre accuracy, said GLONASS was better than GPS at northern latitudes.

"It functions somewhat better at northern latitudes because its satellite orbits are located higher in the sky and we see them better than we do the GPS satellites," said Bo Jonsson, deputy head of a geodesic research unit at Swepos.