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 may be easier to approach this from the other side. Instead of asking “How is GPS free?” consider, “Why can’t companies charge for GPS?”
That’s much simpler to answer: they don’t own it.
GPS is owned by the US Government. What civilians buy isn’t GPS itself, but essentially a tool that allows them to talk with US Government GPS satellites. Some of these tools are fancier than the rest, but ultimately the ability to talk with GPS satellites is the same. And since it doesn’t belong to a company, they can’t charge for it. They only charge for the device needed to talk with the satellites.
As for why GPS is available at all, that’s because one time it was confusing as to where one country’s sky ended and another country’s sky began. And because it was nighttime, an unfun country decided to be violent and very badly hurt a bunch of innocent people. So the US decided to share use of its GPS service with everyone, so such things would happen by accident far less often. (See [KAL 007](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007) for further reading)
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