EU and US agree on high-end sat nav standard

The US and EU have reached agreement on a compatibility plan for location signals to be transmitted by new American and European navigation satellites. In a joint press release today, US and EU authorities announced a signal plan to be implemented on the future European Galileo Open Service and the American GPS IIIA new civil …

[Jasmine Strong]

Qualcomm's just bitter

Qualcomm's just bitter because their wideband front ends suck. There are plenty of wideband front end designs available from other vendors; besides, whenever a technology exists and there's a demand for it, someone will make a cheap chip to exploit it. MBOC positioning is the same as gigabit ethernet or even parallel channel GPS receivers. Sure, it's expensive right now, but give it a few years.

[Kjetil]

@Jasmine Strong

Gigabit ethernet isn't expensive right now. You can pick up a NIC and a switch for a dime and a song these days. Still, got your point though

[the Jim bloke]

Learn to read streetsigns

I use current generation GPS for industrial/professional use. Having better coverage, faster more accurate positioning, etc, will be a worthwhile improvement at that level.

improving street-nav and mobile phone accessability is of trivial significance - and thus will get the most interest - but idiot tourists, and delivery truck drivers are adequately served by what is available already. The improvements they will get with the new satellites etc are going to be far above what they would need anyway.

Build the new system so it is useful for demanding applications, not some half-arsed warm and fuzzy user-friendly piece of crap.