GPS has made a major impact on our world. How is it a free service that anyone with a phone can access? How is it profitable for companies to offer services like navigation without subscription fees or ads?
In: Technology
GPS is hi-tech beacons, floating in space. Like real life beacons, if you can see them you can use them to navigate.
GPS wasn’t freely available to be used by civilians from the beginning. GPS is designed to be used with a set of less accurate codes for civilians to use in situations like surveying etc, and a more accurate codes for the military to use. The less accurate signal was further scrambled to achieve poorer performance, however this interference was removed around 2000.
Like real beacons, the biggest investment for GPS is the construction and delivery, after that the running cost is relatively reasonable. The people on the ground need to check if the clocks on those satellites are still accurate enough, and tweak them a bit if needed. Sometimes a satellite would fail and they would send the back up satellite to that spot and decommission the failed ones. And there’s new frequencies and signals so the missiles can be more accurate but usually that also means your phone can be more accurate too.
There are 4 GPS-like global navigation systems currently operational: the GPS, GLONASS, Beidou and Gallio. Your phone, if new enough, can receive all their signals. The first 3 are all defense projects. They are not free, some of your tax money is paying for it, and sometimes your enemy country’s tax payers money is helping you play Pokemon Go better. Just a thought.
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