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Space Government Politics

Europe Building Their Own GPS 536

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the now-to-find-the-needle-in-the-political-haystack dept.
An anonymous reader writes "BBC News is reporting that Europe is planning to build their own satellite-navigation network that will be backward and forward compatible. There's going to be 5 levels ranging from free (1m accuracy) to commercial (1cm accuracy)! Provision is also being made for a search and rescue mode where a signal can be sent to confirm that help is on the way. The system will supposedly even work with existing US network after upgrades to the network."
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Europe Building Their Own GPS More

Europe Building Their Own GPS

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  • ... and the reason is: (Score:5, Informative)

    by Troed ( 102527 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @08:59AM (#14344387) Homepage Journal
    (To stop all US comments about why we Europeans don't need this)

    GPS is a military-run programme; its signals can be degraded or switched off. Yes, the service is free, but its continuity and quality come with no guarantees

    Galileo will be a civil system. It will be run by a private consortium and will offer guaranteed levels of service

    (from the article)

    • I like one of the systems..

      " Public regulated Encrypted; Continuous availability even in time of crisis; Government agencies will be main users "

      So they can shut down the public free systems.. or degrade them "in times of crisis" or they wouldn't put this in the system.

      I wonder who will decide this?

    • Re:... and the reason is: (Score:5, Insightful)

      by saterdaies ( 842986 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @09:24AM (#14344501)
      While I agree largely with what you've said, it does raise some issues. First, it's not just Europeans that need Galileo. Everyone in the world will reap the benefits of a civil-run positioning system that isn't controlled by the Pentagon. Second, I think it is well within the bounds of sanity to question if it is needed. Yes, the reason you quoted is quite valid: the US government could mess with the GPS in the future and it's always nice to have an alternative system to balance it. But how much are we willing to pay for said alternative system? I believe the article said that it was going to cost $3-4bn. That's a lot of money. For my money, I would rather accept that when the US gets all flustered about a possible terrorist attack (or G-d forbid, another happens), my GPS gets bad accuracy or is turned off for a little while. Think of it like you think of a computer purchase (since this is Slashdot). With Dell, you have two notebook options: the Inspiron which is cheaper and less reliable, and the Latitude which is more expensive and more reliable. Which do you buy? For my use of GPS (which is limited to car navigation), it's not a big deal if the accuracy degrades and it really isn't even that big a deal if it is turned off - so, I'd have to go back to Mapquest like most of the world (or is it Google Maps that everyone's using today). I, as well as most people I would suspect, would choose price over the small possibility of degraded accuracy or a system lockout. While Galileo is free, nothing is free. It's being paid for with government money and the government money comes from people. Oh, and the article does mention that Galileo might be degraded or shut off in the most extreme circumstances and, to my knowledge, the United States hasn't been messing with GPS much if any. I hate a US hegemony as much as anyone, but Galileo is expensive (I think those billions could be better spent on thins like, say, treating Aids) and the US hasn't done anything (to my knowledge) with the GPS yet to make me too worried and even if the US does mess with it for non-mission critical things (like my car's nav system) temporarally, it isn't a big deal (not a big enough deal for me to want to spend $3-4bn on it). Yeah, using the GPS puts us all at the will of the Pentagon for our navigation needs, but creating an alternative is expensive and in my opinion more expensive than the freedom from the Pentagon's management is worth.

      • Re:... and the reason is: (Score:4, Informative)

        by Scarblac ( 122480 ) <slashdot@gerlich.nl> on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @09:44AM (#14344596) Homepage

        GPS was also expensive, but it made the investment back several times over in benefits to US industry. That is expected for Galileo too, for instance by the commercial service. It's an investment.

        • Nope (Score:3, Insightful)

          by lommer ( 566164 )
          Here's a better reason: 1cm accuracy combined with guaranteed service quality will mean that the system is a lot more useful in many industries than GPS. I'm a pilot, so I'll use that example: while the grandparent's car's nav system isn't critical the instrument system used to perform zero-visibility landings on 800-passenger airliners is. DGPS with WAAS is already being used to perform non-precision instrument approaches, but the Selective Availability (currently disabled by the pentagon, but could be tur
      • Yeah, using the GPS puts us all at the will of the Pentagon for our navigation needs, but creating an alternative is expensive

        Freedom ain't free.
      • [quote]
        For my money, I would rather accept that when the US gets all flustered about a possible terrorist attack (or G-d forbid, another happens), my GPS gets bad accuracy or is turned off for a little while.
        [/quote]

        That may be acceptable for you car-computer, but not for my countries cruise-missiles. I do not want any other country (including the US) to control them, or their navigation-systems.

        Unfortunatly Galileo can still be controled by the US. Europe more or less was told to hand over the controls, or

      • Economic benefits far outweigh costs (Score:5, Informative)

        by FreeUser ( 11483 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @11:11AM (#14345205)
        But how much are we willing to pay for said alternative system? I believe the article said that it was going to cost $3-4bn. That's a lot of money. For my money, I would rather accept that when the US gets all flustered about a possible terrorist attack (or G-d forbid, another happens), my GPS gets bad accuracy or is turned off for a little while.

        First, 3-4 billion is chump change when it comes to government spending, and particularly so when it comes to international consortia spending. The economic value far outweighs the cost, by orders of magnitude.

        Second, while you may find it merely inconvinient to have your GPS stop working, try telling that to a pilot (or 300 passengers) on a plane that is landing on a GPS precisions approch with weather at minimums and terrain all around, when the government decides to get into a tizzy and "disable" their approach. WAAS is intended to counteract that, but the point remains: they are having to deploy another multi-billion dollar system to offset the deliberate design issues and unreliability of the first multi-billion dollar system.

        The Europeans are spending the money once, and getting a better, more reliable system they, instead of we, control. It makes all the sense in the world, and will probably allow their planes to land in near zero-zero conditions (unlike GPS+WAAS), and certainly with more precision than GPS (1 cm accuracy!).

        Finally, fuck the US if we don't like it. We have no business, and no right, to dictate to the rest of the world what technology they may, or may not, deploy. As for our "reserving the right" to shoot down their satelites, I'm sure they (and the Russians, and the Chinese) reserve the "right" to nuke us back into the stoneage if they feel sufficiently threatened. That so-called "right" (talk about orwellian doublespeak!) to destroy something or someone suddenly becomes a lot less appealing when one is on the receiving end, doesn't it?

      • Re:... and the reason is: (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Alioth ( 221270 ) <no@spam> on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @11:14AM (#14345221) Journal
        You may like to accept the degraded (or non existent signal) if the US turns it off, but pilots aren't. Already, there are plans in the US to get rid of most ground-based navaids. Currently, in Europe, GPS is not valid for IFR (instrument flight rules) navigation, because no European country has any kind of guarantee on quality-of-service. It wouldn't be too great, for example, if you were on an instrument approach and >poof, GPS is degraded or turned off just when you really really need sub 5-meter accuracy. Until Europe has its own satellite navigation system, its commercial airlines and private aircraft must rely on many expensive and inaccurate ground-based navaids (for example, you still need an ADF receiver - truly pre-historic, inadequate and inaccurate - to fly IFR in Europe).

    • (To stop all US comments about why we Europeans don't need this) Galileo will be a civil system. It will be run by a private consortium and will offer guaranteed levels of service

      Such statements are either naive or deceptive. I expect more from you sophisticates. What do you think China will do with 1 cm accuracy? Track Pandas? No, they will develop Galileo guided weapons and giving them further options in Taiwan, Kashmir, and even Siberia. All possible for a pitance of a few $100M. Galileo creates a s

      • What do you think China will do with 1 cm accuracy? Track Pandas?

        Um, actually, yes, that's one thing they do use GPS for now...

        Your entire post begins from the premise that the US must continue to keep absolute control of GPS systems to defend itself. Back in the days of the Soviet Union/Empire, the same rationale was used for the iron curtain.

        I do agree, the US will anticipate use of any rival system by hostiles. The air force already has policies to do with that, obviously, and to do with hypothetic

        • There would be a large number of reasons for the EU to do this which simply are not mentioned

          1)Pure national pride
          2)Response to getting shut down over the DNS root server control issue
          3)A stepping stone to getting their act together in terms of outer space technology and exploration
          4)A backup plan in case some satellites of the US GPS system experiences problems, which could be technologically related or politically motivated: a diverse system is more robust.
          5)Profits: A large amount of the investmen

        • Re:Who's escalating this, again? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Wellspring ( 111524 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @10:26AM (#14344895)
          OK let me start by saying that the two parents are being a bit absolutist and silly. YES, an EU-controlled GPS rival is a strategic threat to the US. This doesn't mean that we need to jam it or destroy it. French nuclear weapons are a strategic threat as well, but we don't propose to destroy them, either. We're the strongest power, but not the only power, and the EU (quite rightly) is working to increase their power relative to ours.

          Similarly, this isn't some ham-handed reaction to the current administration. European attempts to counter and triangulate against American power date back to, well, the beginnings of American power. Even during the Cold War, European interests occassionally clashed with American interests. France's withdrawal from the NATO command structure in 1966, the Suez crisis, German attempts at appeasement vs the USSR, the "European Approach" to terrorism pre-9/11, conflicts over flyover rights during the Libyan attack, approaches to mid-east peace.... any of these sound familiar? In the 80's, American and Italian soldiers had an armed standoff on a NATO base. We stuck together and papered over our differences because of a larger enemy, but things haven't always been roses.

          Post-Cold War, things have changed a bit. In the past, a larger common enemy (the USSR) kept the US and EU mostly at common purposes. Lacking that, ties began to fray. The Clinton Administration didn't initiate any major new foreign policy changes other than good relations for their own sake (for which the EU nations extracted diplomatic and trade concessions). Even then, however, a long-term goal of the franco-german alliance was to assemble a counterbalance to the US.

          What's developing isn't emnity; it's just the kind of wary maneuvering that friendly nations normally practice. So of course the EU is rolling their own GPS system. And of course we'll invent countermeasures. This isn't because we hate them, or they hate us, or either of us expects to ever fight. This is the normal hedging of bets and accretion of power that nations practice. The structural issues of power are far more important than disputes of the moment.

      • Of course! Having 1cm accuracy is oodles better than 20m accuracy for tactical nukes. They're such precision instruments donchaknow.

      • Your right, I feel so much happier knowing that China has to hope its missiles hit the target they're aiming for, rather than something vaguely in the area...

        </sarcasm>

      • Back to the cold war? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by gotan ( 60103 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @10:40AM (#14344977) Homepage
        It's really amazing how all this cold war rhetorics is dug up again (or has it never died?). Only Russia is no big threat atm so now it's China. I mean, what is it, is it paranoia or is it that US-Politics needs that big evil enemy to distract their people from the problems at home? It's a never ending story, China, Terrorists, evil Communists ... did anything change since McCarthy or do we need to relive all that crap because of 9/11?

        Sure, 9/11 was a tragic event, but even more tragic is what was done to the american ideals of freedom and democracy in the name of the "war on terror".

        Now what has all this to do with Galileo vs. GPS you may ask. Well, GPS is under US-military control. ATM they're acting like they could throw a fit of paranoia anytime and switch off all civil GPS functionality. Sory, but that's the picture the US government is sending out into the world: self centered control freaks with tunnelvision that might jump anytime for reasons only they know.

        Now you wouldn't trust someone like that with a system your life depends on, but that's exactly what we need: GPS- (or Galileo-) guided navigation systems for planes and ships, fully automated systems relying on accurate GPS-coordinates for positioning, you name it. If it isn't lives depending on these systems it's at least big money.

        And no, noone trusts the US to provide a reliable GPS service. They might switch off the system without prior warning because of some perceived terrorist threat (thereby doing more damage worldwide than any terrorist could), they might do it to damage european economy or threaten to do it in some kind of blackmail-scheme, who knows.

        And that's why we need Galileo.

  • Someone wants to be the only kid with cool toys (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @08:59AM (#14344388)
    After many years of trying to convince europe its unnecessary, the US still reserves the right to shoot the satellites down if it wants http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=vie wArticle&code=20041026&articleId=557 [globalresearch.ca]
    • Someone wants to be the only kid with cool toys

      I think it's a bit unfair to assume this is simply about having the coolest toys. From the article you pointed to:

      The European delegates reportedly said they would not turn off or jam signals from their satellites, even if they were used in a war with the United States.

      So even if Galileo were being used against the US, Europe has declared that they will not shut down the system. It shouldn't be too hard to understand that such an extreme position leav

  • Security (Score:4, Interesting)

    by parasonic ( 699907 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @08:59AM (#14344390)
    Reading the frelling article, I don't see what keeps anyone from hacking and getting the 'commercial-grade' service. What sort of blocks are there? Will this be like DirecTV which becomes very easily decodeable after a few years and millions of deployments, or will this be like some of the military satellite signals whose keys change every day?

    • Re:Security (Score:3, Informative)

      by JanneM ( 7445 )
      Reading the frelling article, I don't see what keeps anyone from hacking and getting the 'commercial-grade' service.

      I think a major point of the commercial-grade service isn't the precision itself (which will more or less become available anyway), but the fact that paying for it will guarantee the service. As in, if an incident happens, it's the service operator's fault if the accuracy was degraded. Of course, the service comes with an error estimate; if the signal is degrading and the user (or their equipm

    • Re:Security (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Reading the frelling article, I don't see what keeps anyone from hacking and getting the 'commercial-grade' service. What sort of blocks are there? Will this be like DirecTV which becomes very easily decodeable after a few years and millions of deployments, or will this be like some of the military satellite signals whose keys change every day?

      For obvious reasons, I'm posting anonymously.

      The keys are changed every forthnight, so it is _not_ easy to crack. And if you have a key, it'll give accurate datas

    • Re:Security (Score:3, Insightful)

      by erik_norgaard ( 692400 )
      I don't know if it is easily hackable, but with a 1m accuracy for the free version I have difficult to find the ones who see a market in hacking this. Of course it's a question of price of the commercial grade version also, but still.

  • very old news (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Phil246 ( 803464 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @09:01AM (#14344396)
    We've known about this for at least a year...
    do people not remember the bush administration threatening to use anti-satellite weapons unless europe gave the US the power to interfere with it, jam the satellites and/or switch them off or to a lower resolution mode for certain areas of the globe which they were fighting in?

  • Good... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I think that this is a good move by the Europeans. The USA (who controls GPS) can shut it down whenever they please.
    The European counterpart is governed by an independant organization, so no government can shut it down without notice.

    By the way, this isn't a pure European project, other countries such as China, Israel, Marocco and Saudi-Arabia joined the program too, others may join later.
  • They should bundle on of those GPS gizmos with the backpacking and tour guides. C'mon, it's only 0.496 KM to the Eiffel Tower!
    • Most modern GPS already come with the mapping software to do this already, or you can purchase it.
      If I am in an area with with Garmin I just select attractions and it brings up a list of all the nearby ones I can look for a name that looks interesting and select map and I am given directions and distance to it.

  • a VERY OLD dupe wtf? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by deadweight ( 681827 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @09:09AM (#14344429)
    Not only is this a dupe, but I think it is one several times over and also several years old. BTW, if the EU wants to spend billions on a duplicate navigation system, all for the good. I will have a more accurate and more redundant nav system paid for by SOMEONE ELSE for once. Thanks!

  • Seems reasonable enough (Score:5, Informative)

    by Mike1024 ( 184871 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @09:09AM (#14344431)
    I can see why governments would like the idea of more accurate GPS; vechicle navigation [ncl.ac.uk].

    Knowing a location to plus-or-minus-10-meters might be fine for a guided missile, but for navigation it's pretty lousy; it couldn't tell which side of the road you were on, let alone whether you were in the right lane. With centimeter-level accuracy, though, you could practically make a car drive itself.

    Michael

  • Anyone else worried about Vehicle Monitoring? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by duguk ( 589689 ) <<dug> <at> <frag.co.uk>> on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @09:19AM (#14344473) Homepage Journal
    Doesn't anyone else see why this would be useful to the Police when they're passively monitoring EVERY VEHICLE?

    See http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/15/21 59244&tid=158&tid=219 [slashdot.org] if you don't remember!!

    I wonder if its worth building a GPS Spoofer like the one on http://gps.hackaday.com/entry/1234000843061178/ [hackaday.com]

    DugUK

  • Useful for Britain to Track its drivers per Mile (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tezza ( 539307 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @09:23AM (#14344495)
    Alistair Darling, the UK Transport Secretary has said that the future of driving is pay per mile [independent.co.uk].

    There has been a lot of comment about how to pull that off with the limitations of the current GPS.

    This new system will in my opinion be designed to have features to support this.

    Should haves:

    Double blind identification. Your receiver in your car will not be personally identifiable.
    Works better in cities with tall buildings
    Better accuracy
    European control.

    Nice to haves:

    Downloadable content:
    - Congestion alerts
    - Emergency Warnings a la radio interupt
    A government certified connection signal that must be displayed when they ARE tracking you.
    Triangulation compensation with terrestrial mobile masts. If we're gonna have big brother, why not make it accurate?

    My 2p.

    • If we're gonna have big brother, why not make it accurate?

      I have always thought one of the downsides to having Big Brother was that if you monitor every single detail of everyone single life then you just end up not seeing anything important because it is physically impossible for a small group of person to keep track of it all.

      And then you get to the problem of keeping track of the people keeping track to ensure they aren't doing anything wrong...

      Of course if you record every bit of detail and say well X c

  • Good for Europe (Score:5, Funny)

    by nharmon ( 97591 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @09:37AM (#14344554)
    I applaud them. They could have went to the United Nations and demanded that the U.S. give them control over the US's GPS system. Instead they are building their own. Good for them.
    • The hypothetical US response: "No, you can't have GPS. But we're willing to compromise and allow you to form a powerless UN committee to 'advise' us."
  • Some folks dislike the idea of the US military having the ability to downgrade the GPS system not -- as some posters have mentioned -- as a response to terrorist threats, but in the more realistic context of a full scale war.

    Given that a GPS guided smart-bomb is only as accurate as the GPS signal, do the folks in Paris, France, or {name your own favorite freedom-allied European municipality and country} really want to give another foreign and presumably malignant military power the ability to bomb down to

    • Don't try to draw terrorism into it, there are just as valid counterarguments of equal feasability about emergency services crumbling because the GPS has just been switched off.

    • Re:Don't forget: GPS can equal targeting data (Score:5, Insightful)

      by CaymanIslandCarpedie ( 868408 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @10:03AM (#14344732) Journal
      Talk about the ultimate terror weapon "country X, give up ________ or our GPS guided weapon will hit elementary school Y", etc., etc. Somehow I don't think that the free world --or even the non-free countries of the world, for that matter -- has much worry that the US military is going to ever do or be allowed to do something like that, do you?

      US: "Iraq, give up your WMD or our GPS guided weapons will hit everything".

      Iraq: "Dude, We don't have any! You've had people here looking for 10 years! We'd gladly turn them over if we had them but we don't. PLEASE DON'T BOMB US!!!!

      US: "Whatever! You have till the count of three! one..two..BAMMMMM!

      Nope, your right nothing to worry about. The US would NEVER do anything like that ;-)
      • Please mod parent up. I was watching when that exchange occurred and thinking the exact same thing...
    • We have come to rely on GPS for so many purposes that turning it off would for practical purposes be an act of terrorism. Ships would lose their way and founder. GPS based emergency services would be crippled. Not to mention tremendous economic impact on systems that are based on having real time positional information for proper operation.

      The main thing you'd get with the new system is greater precision on consumer devices.

      In a GPS guided bomb, this would enable precision attacks. Typical consumer unit

    • Re:Don't forget: GPS can equal targeting data (Score:5, Insightful)

      by diegocgteleline.es ( 653730 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @10:46AM (#14345022)
      really want to give another foreign and presumably malignant military power the ability to bomb down to one meter accuracy?

      May be we should also shutdown internet, spy phone talks, and stop scientific research - since that research can be used for evil purposes.

  • in case the US GPS is disabled or malfunctioning

  • Real Reason this FAQ is up... (Score:3, Informative)

    by PPGMD ( 679725 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @09:51AM (#14344637) Journal
    Europe just launched their first bird into orbit.

    Anyways never really got the hub bub about this system, the US discontinued the use of SA in 2000, because aviation has become utterly dependent on GPS (the current FAA plan includes only supplements to GPS when the current VOR system is decommissioned). Also our birds have many of the same capabilities, I believe we have 12 in orbit currently that are of the new spec, we just don't have different scales for pay use and such.

  • It works better than the Beage 2.

  • Premium service (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There's going to be 5 levels ranging from free (1m accuracy) to commercial (1cm accuracy)!

    In an effort to protect its valuable property, the satellite consortium has already started sending take-down notices to parties who are using workarounds to share high-precision location information.

    One recipient of these notices was the Greenwich Observatory, which was recently forced to replace its narrow brass strip on the prime meridian with a 2m-wide piece of ragged carpet in order to keep freeloaders from pir

  • I'll build my OWN GPS! With hookers! And blackjack! In fact, forget the GPS and the blackjack...

  • GPS vs Galileo (Score:4, Interesting)

    by kfstark ( 50638 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @10:46AM (#14345020) Homepage
    The more interesting part of the story is the difference in accuracy between GPS and Galileo. By the time Galileo has enough birds in the sky in 2014, GPS will have included L1C ( GPS Modernization [uscg.gov]) which will have accuracy on par with the galileo satellites. Having gone to the planning meetings on the L1C project almost 18 months ago, I can tell you that Galileo was a big topic of conversation and that it drove the choice of signal modulation for the new code.


    This is really old news and extremely complex. The galileo/GPS compatibility was negotiated between the EU and the US State Department over a very long period. The EU deliberately picked an incompatible code to force concessions from the US before the EU consented and went with the better frequency.


    This is a great example of technology driven politics.


    --Keith

  • Russian System (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tomherbst ( 888500 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @12:57PM (#14345986)
    The US vs Europe debate fails to notice that there exists an
    operational alternative to the US GPS system. Russia has had a
    working system for years. There are shipping chipsets that do both
    GPS and GLONASS.

    http://www.glonass-center.ru/ [glonass-center.ru]

    Europe should just slip the Russians a few Euro to keep it running
    and get a contractual agreement on levels of service.
  • Caveat: I'm an American, and a avowed capitalist.

    Some points:

    1. WAAS plus proper GPS equipment can be as good as Galileo, note that the article claims 10-35cms, not 1 cm accuracy. That's 6+ GPS satellites and WAAS levels of accuracy. Galileo satelites may start out better than GPS, but keep in mind that both constellations require (will require) constant replacement. GPS (and Galileo) will receive constant improvements, but higher accuracy is more a problem of physics (atmospheric interference) and computing power on your device (that 10 year old ARM chip in your handheld GPS can only do so much).

    2. The U.S. government has sworn off Selective Avaliability. At the same time, the U.S. government has developed ability to do regional jaming of GPS. *shrug* This is a concern, but a marginal one; I doubt that they'll be turning off GPS signals over London, Paris, or New York anytime soon. Not without having grounded all the planes first.

    Having said that:

    Galileo is another "GPS-like" system that will be avaliable for FREE. The U.S. government will not have to spend a DIME on it, but we'll have TWICE as many positioning satellites avaliable for our use.

    Uhh... Sweetness? Free-stuff? Be happy?

    The real advantage will be dual-band receivers that are able to use the signals from both systems. In areas where you can only get 2-3 GPS satellites, you'll get 2-3 of each, which may (or may not) be enough to get you 10> or even 1> meter accuracy.

    How, exactly, is this NOT in an American's interest?

    And we don't have to pay for it?

    Ummm... Groovey?

    Don't look a gift horse in the mouth!

    Redundant, complimentary systems that don't cost us anything more are a godsend. I'm thrilled that Europe is doing this, and everyone not in Europe should be thrilled as well.

    The Europeans should be thrilled, but they are permitted a (very slight) grumble at the cost, similar to the grumbles we (Americans) made when the GPS system was developed. Europe is providing a service to the entire global by putting up this system.

    Would people complain the same way if Europe (or the U.S.) developed a world-wide free WiFi system?

    I think not.

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