Just like other natural resources, such as energy and water, access to precise timekeeping is critical to any nation’s security and welfare. Precise timekeeping is vital to national defense, law enforcement, telecommunications, power grids, financial transactions, computer networks and transportation systems — and many other areas. And when it comes to making sure it does have access to precise timekeeping, a sovereign nation has only two options. It can either rely on another country for national timekeeping or provide its own.

A national timekeeping infrastructure also confers significant political and technical recognition as it enables countries to be among those that contribute to UTC, Coordinated Universal Time.

As the international standard timescale, UTC is the composite of national clock systems throughout the world. Those systems both reference UTC and contribute to UTC by reporting time to the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) in Paris via GNSS link. To qualify as UTC members clocks must be state-of-the-art for frequency stability and system availability. National time-scale systems are able to maintain an independent source of time loosely steered to UTC while contributing their individual clock times to the BIPM using a method called GNSS common view

For obvious reasons most industrialized countries either already have, or are in the process of establishing, a national timescale. They don’t wish to rely on other countries, nor do they typically wish to wait a long time to implement their own timescale — and now they don’t have to. Timescales that meet UTC standards for national timekeeping are today available as commercial off the shelf (COTS) products. Regulatory authorities may also qualify COTS solutions faster since product specifications build off a predetermined base. In addition, COTS usually means commercial volume pricing, which is typically lower than the cost of earlier national timescales that were often assembled onsite with custom-built parts.

That’s why Symmetricom introduced the world’s first COTS national timescale last year. As the principal commercial provider of cesium frequency standards, a COTS offering lets us better leverage that technology for the economic benefit of our customers. (The atomic resonance of cesium is the basis of the UTC second.) In fact, the Symmetricom 5071A cesium frequency standard accounts for 76% of all UTC clocks and contributes 87% of UTC time.

Another advantage of COTS solutions is that their detailed specifications and descriptions are readily available online so technical reviewers can start researching them right away. Learn more about Symmetricom’s commercial world-class turnkey timing system.