Pay For Gps Service?

[Howling/Pepper Chef]

Saw this link while surfing the web. Dont know if its been posted before. Sorry if it has been.

Link

[+Hemlock]

Looks like a Sloof Lirpa to me.

 

Edit: woohoo my 1,000th post

Edited April 2, 2005 by Hemlock

[Alphawolf]

Yup...It's being planned! Get ready fellow geocachers! Did you really think it would stay free? Name one other thing the U.S. Govt. lets us use for free...

[+Team Benhamtroll]

To me as well. Can you imagine the cost that would be incrued by the DoD to update all of their equipment to handle a new signal that had to be decoded in order for a subscription plan to work, not to mention the new regulation that would have to be in place to update all the consumer equipment for such an endeavor? It would make the struggles over HDTV look like trying to break a kid of their blanky . . .

[+hardwire]

hmmmm what is today..... Guess I better read the FULL details.....

[+robert]

every time you get a paycheck, a portion goes to pay for the GPS birds in the sky.

[+Couparangus]

Yup, this has April Fools written all over it. Reminds me of modem tax.

[+badlands]

Good One!!!!!!

[+Greymane]

The modem tax was an April Fools Joke?!? Who am I paying every month??? I suppose you are gonna tell me that the scientifically formulated "cologne" I just ordered won't have chicks flocking to me, either!

[Z15]

.l

Edited April 2, 2005 by Z15

[joe_shmoe]

the US taxpayer already pays for the service. does anyone have a figure for how much it has cost us thus far to build and maintain satellites? would it make sense to charge a fee to users outside of the US?

[joe_shmoe]

was just reading a geocaching article and it is $12 billion thus far for the american taxpayer.

[+NightPilot]

How would you propose to collect user fees from anyone, inside or outside the USA? The signals are broadcast continuously, and anyone with a receiver can receive them, just like any radio signal. The Russian system, GLONASS, has been in service almost as long as the US system, and the European system, EGNOS, is in service now, so there is plenty of competition.

[joe_shmoe]

you'd probably have to scramble the signal in some way and then each unit would need a certain code or chip... i figure the "user fee" would be a one time built in cost at time of purchase. Something like manufacturers of mp3 players who pay a per unit royalty so their users are immune from prosecution under copyright law in the US.

 

I'm not saying that I think there should be fees. At least our government spent $12 B on something that is useful for everyone. I can't say that about a lot of things that taxpayer money is spent on.

[+Miragee]

I wonder if the people who don't Geocache, and hear it is about looking for Tupperware hidden in the woods, think spending "$12 B on something that is useful" would agree . . .

[+NightPilot]

Geocaching is one of a huge number of minor uses for GPS, only a small side effect. The system was originally developed for the military, and all civilian use is just a bonus, but today shipping and aviation rely on it so heavily that it's just not possible to suddenly start scrambling the signals. The installed base of receivers is huge, and the ones used by ships and aircraft cost tens of thousands of dollars each. It's just not economically feasible to require all of them to suddenly be replaced. The military signals are already encrypted. The genie is out of the bottle, and isn't going back inside.

[+scott9282]

Go back to the website and read it again. The title has been changed.

 

It. Was. A. Joke.

[peter]

The Russian system, GLONASS, has been in service almost as long as the US system, and the European system, EGNOS, is in service now, so there is plenty of competition.

GLONASS has been up for awhile, but it's hanging on by a thread. Last I checked there were only 11 operating satellites in the constellation. You'd better be in a very unobstructed location and schedule your activity based on the satellite orbits if you want to get a reasonable fix using GLONASS.

 

EGNOS isn't a separate system at all, but the European equivalent of WAAS, i.e. it provides correction data for the GPS system and gives higher accuracy. It augments GPS, but it doesn't replace it.

 

Eventually the Europeans plan to have the Galileo system provide an alternative to GPS, but they're still haggling over funding and control issues. Scheduled for 2008 but I wouldn't be surprised to see it slip Of course if there really were a serious proposal to restrict access to GPS then the Europeans and others would be much more motivated to get Galileo off the ground.