
The GPS wars have begun - zachguo
https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/21/the-gps-wars-have-begun/
======
lolc
In my view the perspective of the author is needlessly antagonistic. China is
only demanding inclusion of their own Beidou system, with no mention of
banning other systems. As others here have pointed out: That Beidou receivers
could be banned in the U.S. seems to be baseless speculation on part of the
author.

The good news: There will be four competing global positioning systems
available to consumers. They're motivated to operate their systems out of
strategic military and economic reasons.

To call this a war is uncalled for. It's an arms-race with civilian benefits.
It would be a war if they jammed or destroyed each other's satellites.

~~~
notacoward
> To call this a war is uncalled for

Agreed. It reminds me of a saying:

"To those accustomed to privilege, equality seems like an attack."

This isn't exactly privilege, but same principle. The US has been used to
defining the category. Now they don't. To the insecure that seems like a
threat, not a move toward the federated kind of system it should always have
been.

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robotbikes
"Theoretically, one positioning chip could be designed to incorporate all of
these different systems, but that might run afoul of U.S. national security
laws." \- the author mentions this speculatively but doesn't provide any
citations. Does anyone know what they might be referring to and also what
level of technology it would require to use multiple satellite networks at
once or switch been them.

~~~
omgtehlion
That is bullshit. ~7 yeras ago I worked at a company, which designed and
manufactured GNSS receivers capable of receiving gps,glonass,gallileo,qzss and
blend the signals to get more accurate solution. Receivers started at $5000 a
pop though.

The company had no problems selling in the US abd Russia. And even had
multiple competitors.

Hence, expert/import laws are not a problem. At least for professional
equipment.

~~~
olex
Nowadays, combined GNSS receivers like you mention are available from various
electronic retailers for around 20-50$ a piece. The uBlox Neo M8 is a popular
chip, there are a few others too. They are widely used in UAVs (where I know
them from) and a variety of other applications, and routinely use anywhere
between 22-28 active satellites from multiple constellations (compared to
typical 7-11 visible for GPS alone).

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Friedduck
I was curious and checked the specs for my bike computer: “Supported
Satellites: GPS, GLONASS, BEIDOU Galileo, and QZSS.”

This is in a $250 unit so clearly neither cost nor geopolitics seem to be
obstacles.

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mpweiher
Title needs fix: Begun the GPS wars have.

But seriously, "war"? Positioning has turned out to be such a vital economic
factor that having multiple suppliers seems such an obvious Good Thing™ that
it shouldn't need explaining, and the article doesn't really offer any support
for its "war" rhetoric apart from showing that there are multiple suppliers.

Despite the assurances that were made, even I as a citizen of an "ally" of the
US am not comfortable with sole dependence on GPS and find Galileo a good
project. And as we can see, it only takes one unhinged administration to make
such assurances next to worthless. If you're higher up on the shitlist
(unclear at this point how that's ordered), the need become greater.

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burfog
The US GPS system was alone for so long that people just call it "GPS". The
name is Navstar-GPS. Those other systems are also GPS, but not Navstar.

~~~
billfruit
I thought Glonass satellites were up in orbit by mid 80s almost the same time
as the US Navistar system.

~~~
omgtehlion
They were up there at the time but not complete constellation

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kingosticks
How does the UK estimate it would cost them so much less than everyone else to
provide their own equivalent system? Or is this just a really bad attempt at
negotiating down passive use of Galileo in the future?

~~~
BillinghamJ
Perhaps because the physical land area it needs to cover is very small?

~~~
kingosticks
May's argument was regarding the military's need to depend on the tech and
that alone is a requirement for it to work globally.

~~~
blattimwind
Why, is she trying to bring the Empire back? That ship sailed a looong time
ago.

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paraditedc
Completely off-topic, but the world is more than just us versus them:

A good read from 1998, _Taking a “War of Words” Too Literally_ :

[https://paradite.com/2014/01/23/good-articletaking-a-war-
of-...](https://paradite.com/2014/01/23/good-articletaking-a-war-of-words-too-
literally/)

------
CraigGivant
Have to agree with others that the title of this article is misleading.
Positioning satelites have been deployed by different countries for many years
and the truth is the US "birds" are in various stages of disrepair. Yes they
have launched some new updated SV's (space vehicles) but not enough to offset
the advantages provided by a full constelation of high end, new tech, units.
The true "war" revolves around selective availability which is controlled by
each individual entity. It is important to note that positioning quality does
not improve based strictly on the number of satelites a receiver can see but
more so the configuration of the satelites that are available at any given
time. In some cases less is actually more and the difference would never be
noticible to the average consumer.

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johnjonesyc
raw sensor access matters, so does calibration

you can see some characteristics of devices here:
[https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/sensors/gnss](https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/sensors/gnss)

Its relatively simple to jam GNSS signals since they are so weak.

QZSS is a interesting formation since it is designed for urban environment
(skyscrapers and canyons)

The USA has no solution for shipping positioning outside of GPS...

------
megablast
I wonder if having all these extra satellites will increase the accuracy of
GPS positioning? Surely it would, as long as they could all be used at the
same time.

~~~
xhruso00
GPS is not super accurate for average consumers. Only military has centimetres
precision.

~~~
extrapickles
The new Block III GPS sats have a new civilian signal that will improve the
quality of a fix as the ionosphere can be directly measured. Jury is still out
on how well the extra signal will improve accuracy as there isn’t a full set
of sats that broadcast it yet.

~~~
makomk
That requires a dual-frequency receiver, though, which I think is only found
in high-end survey equipment and a handful of very recent and expensive
smartphones.

~~~
b15h0p
Which smartphones are those? Is there a list somewhere?

~~~
ferongr
The Xiaomi Mi 8 is a relatively inexpensive flagship-grade device with L5/E5a
capability.

~~~
losten
Unfortunately, even though there are already several phones on the market
whose hardware supports dual band GPS, the software in most cases doesn't.

see this article for details [https://medium.com/@sjbarbeau/dual-frequency-
gnss-on-android...](https://medium.com/@sjbarbeau/dual-frequency-gnss-on-
android-devices-152b8826e1c)

~~~
ferongr
My Mi 8 with the stable Android P build seems to be using both frequencies for
satellites "in use" at the same time. The actual benefits of it, I don't know
though.

[https://i.imgur.com/dIlh5Mj.png](https://i.imgur.com/dIlh5Mj.png)

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rcMgD2BwE72F
Could private satellite constellations (e.g SpaceX Starlink) also provide a
global positioning service?

~~~
Leherenn
You mean theoretically or with the current hardware they are using?

Given they are going for low cost mass produced, I doubt they have the
necessary hardware, especially the highly accurate clocks.

If you're speaking theoretically, yes, again the hardest would probably be the
clocks, but there's no reason a private company can't produce them if needed.
The bigger issue would be that they would have to compete against the free,
government-subsidiesed networks, which seems really tough. Maybe if they
target the really high accuracy only available to the military, but even then
codeless is already good enough for most applications.

~~~
rcMgD2BwE72F
>Maybe if they target the really high accuracy only available to the military,
but even then codeless is already good enough for most applications.

I had autonomous vehicles in mind, which would certainly benefit from a highly
accurate, ubiquitous and reliable positioning system (esp. if companies like
Tesla can be supplied directly by SpaceX).

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xhruso00
Can someone explain me Glonass? I see those chips in smartphones however I
don't know if and how they are used in 2018

~~~
jabberthemutt
What do you want to know? Basically it's just another set of GNSS satellites
that devices can use for positioning, if their chipset supports it. Customers
benefit greatly from this.

~~~
xhruso00
Do we benefit already? I have no idea which positioning system is in effect.
E.g. I am in Russia - Have I just used GPS, Galilleo, Glonass or combination
of all 3 of them (iPhone 8).

~~~
ymolodtsov
Your iPhone is indifferent to the type of the system and likely uses several
of them at once.

