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
The US Military originally created GPS for their own purposes.
However, after an airliner accidentally went into Soviet airspace and was shot down, it was made free because the benefits of making it available are so much better than any benefit from keeping it private.
GPS is infinitely scalable — the system costs the same to operate if there’s 500 navy boats using it or 6 billion smartphones. The satellites are just broadcasting their position and time, and anything that knows how to listen to it can use that information to figure out its position.
Now stuff that *uses* GPS like Google Maps is a whole different story. GPS is just finding your position. Navigation is a whole different subject. Google Maps is profitable because it is another mechanism for Google to deliver advertisements, as well as collect data.
We pay for it through taxes. It was deemed a very useful service for everyone to have access to after a navigation error caused a plane to fly off course and get shot down.
As for navigation services if it’s free then you are the product. A company like google is collecting tons of information about everyone’s travel and commuting habits as well as traffic patterns that they can turn around and sell to other business.
Anybody with a GPS receiver can access. Phone is not necessary, it’s just a handy place to put a GPS receiver.
It’s not from companies, it’s from the US government. It’s paid for with taxes.
The GPS system was established by the US Government. They pay for it with US tax dollars from Americans. They make it generally available worldwide because collecting fees it too hard in many dimensions, and the good PR of making it available has to be worth something. It certainly contributes to freedom of maritime navigation, an important US foreign policy position.
GPS exists because the US government wanted it for its own purposes, mainly military. For this reason high accuracy used to be restricted only to military, but they eventually let everyone use it evenly. It’s just like having a public radio, but in space, and it lets you know where you are if you know how to read the signals correctly.
Navigation is what companies did with GPS to offer you a product. Navigation on a phone is a draw to you buying that phone, as you may prefer a phone with good navigation included over one where you would have to buy navigation separately. They can make money on the back end by charging businesses to be featured in the navigation.
I remember way back when you could buy a GPS module with navigation for the Palm Pilot. It used to be a product, and an expensive one. Earlier, the Magellan was synonymous with GPS navigation, and it was very expensive.
Because in [1983 a Korean Air 747](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007) experienced a problem with its navigation computer that’s inherent to every inertial navigation system called drift and accidentally flew over part of the Soviet Union. It was shot down killing everyone onboard. After this, Ronald Reagan made it available for everyone to use. The US Space Force maintains it; the military uses a more accurate version of it using the same satellites broadcasting on different frequencies.
It’s not free. Actual satellite-based GPS was paid for by the US government for military use, with satellites and ground stations emitting multiple encrypted signals.
After Korean Air Lines Flight 007, which was shot down by the Soviets because the plane (unknowingly) had entered Russian airspace and was presumed a military aircraft, the US government publicized some (but not all) decryption keys for some of those signals, for civil uses. Decryption keys for the more accurate signals remain a secret kept for military use.
Only later did other factions start launching satellites for comparable positioning systems like GLONASS, GALILEO and Beidou.
Basically, each GPS satellite has an onboard clock and it just broadcasts the time. Your GPS device gets signals from multiple satellites, each one slightly delayed by the speed of light. Then it does some math to figure out how far away each satellite is, based on how long it took the signal to travel. Then it does a bit more math to determine your position based on the known positions of the satellites.
The satellites that make GPS possible are owned by the US military. Some countries are starting to launch their own satellites to reduce their reliance on the US Government, but for the most part they are owned and managed by the government. As such, they are paid for by the US taxpayers.
As far as GPS itself being free – you, or someone else, is paying for it with their tax dollars. All 3 major systems work on exactly the same concepts, and were initially developed for military use. They’re still primarily there for the military, and the governments that sponsor the 3 major constellations all definitely have it in their plans to degrade or disable consumer access in the event of a conflict. (Consumer in this case being anything outside the sponsoring military)
As far as free navigation, nobody said there aren’t ads. Google Maps is part of Google’s AD platform, with lots of businesses paying to both advertise there, as well as paying for some of the consumer data collected. Similar with the other free navigation platforms.
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