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
It’s not free. It is paid for by American taxpayers. It used to be usable only by the US military, but Bill Clinton made the decision to decrypt the signals so that anyone could use it after a high profile plane crash that it could have avoided.
On top of that, your phone just receives signals from the satellites, it doesn’t send any. Because the system is broadcasting an unencrypted signal which is just received by the device you’re using, there is no way to charge for it.
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