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 government pays for GPS. It costs about $2M per day, and the US government pays for it with tax dollars.
That makes it free for anybody in the world to use.
It’s a little bit like how broadcast radio and television are ‘free’.
There are 24 satellites, all orbiting the Earth. Each satellite is like a radio station, broadcasting a signal. A GPS receiver is like a radio: the satellites are ‘on’ all the time, and the GPS just ‘hears the signals’ and uses it to figure out a location.
The GPS receiver (like your phone) doesn’t have to ‘do anything but listen’. The GPS system doesn’t have to ‘respond to a ‘where am I?’ question – it’s on all the time, like a radio station is on whether 1,000,000 people are listening, or nobody is listening at all.
Latest Answers