US and EU reach agreement on satellite navigation

The United States and the European Union are moving forward on a common system of satellite navigation after reaching an agreement on a joint civil signal for the technology. The US system, called Navstar GPS, is the only fully operational GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) currently in use, though the EU's Galileo project is in the initial stages of deployment. The new agreement eliminates compatibility and security issues, and will allow makers of GPS equipment to increase their devices interoperability by utilizing the new common signals, dubbed GPS L1C and Galileo L1F. The European Commission's Director-General Matthais Ruete says the agreement will "facilitate the rapid acceptance of Galileo in global markets side by side with GPS." Which probably means we're going to begin to see a whole slew of new satellite technology hitting both shores in the near future. Huzzah!

[bozs13 Posted Jul 30th 2007 4:47PM]

Great! I was hoping this would happen.

[dgs Posted Jul 30th 2007 5:39PM]

Not great!

This means the US still has complete control over the GPS market and can control the system as it sees fit. EU, where is your spine!

If its just the same as the US system, whats the point? Spend my tax on getting yobs off the street of something.

[MasterCKO Posted Jul 30th 2007 6:23PM]

Dave, what in the world are you talking about?

Take off the foil hat and enjoy the sun once in a while, dude.

[TVGenius Posted Jul 30th 2007 4:55PM]

Geocaching only gets easier...

[IRJ Posted Jul 30th 2007 5:06PM]

Makes a great deal of sense rather than having 2 competing syste,ms. Galileo was looking likely to be still borne (couldn't raise the funding independantly) so now we get the best of all systems.

[artifex Posted Jul 30th 2007 5:40PM]

Aren't the Chinese working on a system, too? Would like to see that come out. with cross compatibility and coverage overlap, you could collect the data from all networks and "vote" on position, meaning if one network had problems or was being deliberately degraded, you could ignore it.

[skooled Posted Jul 30th 2007 7:42PM]

The Chinese have Compass (in English) or Beidou (in Chinese) and the Russians have GLONASS. India IRNSS as a competing system by 2012.

[legios Posted Jul 31st 2007 12:32AM]

Why is the EU even trying to build a system? Right now the US spends millions to build, launch, and operate the GPS constellation. Everyone else gets to use it for free. I mean, I can understand why the Russians and Chinese need to have their own system, but does the EU really think the US is going to deny them the use of GPS. If I had to pay the ridiculous European taxes, and this is what they gave me in return, I would be ticked.

[IRJ Posted Jul 31st 2007 9:58AM]

legios,
Galileo started off as a privte self funded venture and the business plan was predicated on their offering an even greater specificity of location and selling this increased accuracy for MONEY (note the existing GPS is free to all users..well paid for by US Taxpayers). But what happened is that the natural ungrades to the US GPS systems allows for increased accuracy well within the timeframe of the Galileo becoming operational. Thus the business viability (of their paying back the costs of rollout) came under serious question and the initial partners then failed to come up with the next stage of funding. Effectively they abandond the private project and asked for an EU funding takeover and bankroll it. At this point the US and EU began infomal talks which apparently went well and progressed into a joint action plan allow the US GPS and Galilieo to operationally co-operate to the benefit of users. We don't have all the info yet but I am assuming that Galileo luanches will roll out on the agreed technical platform, but at a lower cost than originlly planned. Thiswill save te US money and reeduce he ost of Galilieo while users will be able to look fwd to a new generation of GPS receivers with many improvements. A win win situation. And perhas signs of better scientific co-operation between the US and the EU. Let's hope this continues.

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 31st 2007 10:10AM]

GPS is a military system and can be degraded or turned off if it deemed to be tactically advantageous to do so. The EU wants a reliable system for its citizens, especially emergency services, not to mention its own armed forces. America wouldn't like to rely on a foreign power for such an essential service as navigation and guidance, and neither do the nations that make up the EU. BTW, I don't want to enter the tax debate here, but I am British, and find the level of tax we pay to be reasonable, considering the benefits.

[legios Posted Aug 1st 2007 12:13AM]

Ian, thank you for the synopsis.

Mike, I have to disagree with your reasoning for these reasons:

1. GPS is not an on or off service. It can be selectively degraded or turned off for various regions of the world. The US would not turn off GPS for Europe

2. GPS has two signals...an encrypted government use one and a civillian signal. The civillian signal can be degraded without affecting the government one. Therefore, the EU's military (most of which are in NATO) would not suffer any degradation.

3. Even the degraded civillian signal is acceptable for most civillian uses..including emergency services. If a more precise position is needed, differential GPS systems can fill in the gap.

4. I cannot imagine a scenario in the next 50 years where the US would find the need to deny the EU GPS. And dude, we would never deny you guys (Brits). Hell, you were are strongest trading partner even during the Revolutionary War and War of 1812.

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 1st 2007 5:35PM]

does this mean that Global Navigation will be more accurate for average consumers? I believe the military limits how precise GPS is for civilians.