Galileo : US - EC negotiations outputs

Toulouse, the 27th of February



Galileo : US - EC negotiations outputs.

After 3 years of difficult negotiation, an important step has been reached
the 25th of February 2004. Brussels and Washington agree on the principle of
the interoperability between the US military navigation satellite system GPS
and the EU civil navigation satellite system Galileo.



Galileo will be independent but the two systems should be compatible. This
means that all the civil users in the world will be able to use the two
systems easily, with only one receiver. It should be fully transparent for
the users. .../...



Read the full article on http://www.polestar-corporate.com/lastmin.htm

On Mon, 1 Mar 2004 21:44:12 +0100, in a place far, far away, "Pole
Star" made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:

After 3 years of difficult negotiation, an important step has been reached
the 25th of February 2004. Brussels and Washington agree on the principle of
the interoperability between the US military navigation satellite system GPS
and the EU civil navigation satellite system Galileo.

Galileo will be independent but the two systems should be compatible. This
means that all the civil users in the world will be able to use the two
systems easily, with only one receiver. It should be fully transparent for
the users. .../...

But, but...I thought that the evil Amerkkkan empire was determined to
prevent any independent European positioning system!

You mean it really was about frequency issues after all?

In article ,
Rand Simberg wrote:
But, but...I thought that the evil Amerkkkan empire was determined to
prevent any independent European positioning system!
You mean it really was about frequency issues after all?

No, this just means that the E.A.E. can recognize a lost cause when
slapped in the face with it :-), and opted for damage control after
conceding that the Europeans weren't going to give up on the concept.
--
MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer
since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. |

No, this just means that the E.A.E. can recognize a lost cause when
slapped in the face with it :-), and opted for damage control after
conceding that the Europeans weren't going to give up on the concept.

I wasn't aware that "getting pretty much everything you originally demanded"
was "damage control". The Euros manuevered this to cause friction with the
US, knowing that friction would provide them the political (and hence
financial) support necessary to get the program through, and would of course
further make the US look like the 'bad guy' - an image very necessary to
the success of so many EU matters these days.

In article asH1c.8942$Pc.5070@okepread02, t_mark wrote:
No, this just means that the E.A.E. can recognize a lost cause when
slapped in the face with it :-), and opted for damage control after
conceding that the Europeans weren't going to give up on the concept.

I wasn't aware that "getting pretty much everything you originally demanded"
was "damage control".

"Pretty much everything you originally demanded" would have been for the
Europeans to forget the whole idea.
--
MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer
since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. |

Rand Simberg wrote:

On Mon, 1 Mar 2004 21:44:12 +0100, in a place far, far away, "Pole
Star" made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:

After 3 years of difficult negotiation, an important step has been reached
the 25th of February 2004. Brussels and Washington agree on the principle of
the interoperability between the US military navigation satellite system GPS
and the EU civil navigation satellite system Galileo.

Galileo will be independent but the two systems should be compatible. This
means that all the civil users in the world will be able to use the two
systems easily, with only one receiver. It should be fully transparent for
the users. .../...

But, but...I thought that the evil Amerkkkan empire was determined to
prevent any independent European positioning system!

You mean it really was about frequency issues after all?

After reading things for the last few years I would say that the U.S. was
not particularly happy about the Galileo system being developed at all
and would have preferred not to be bothered with it.

When it became clear that the Europeans were determined to go ahead
with their system the U.S. settled down into negotiations with them and
they seem to have nearly hammered out a compromise, if things don't
break down before the loose ends are tied up.

It is a good thing that some of the posters to this newsgroup were not
involved in the negotiations because they (both U.S. and European)
don't sound as they like the idea of compromises.

Mike Walsh

Rand Simberg wrote:
But, but...I thought that the evil Amerkkkan empire was
determined to prevent any independent European positioning
system!

You mean it really was about frequency issues after all?

Michel Walsh responded:
After reading things for the last few years I would say that
the U.S. was not particularly happy about the Galileo system
being developed at all and would have preferred not to be
bothered with it.

When it became clear that the Europeans were determined to go
ahead with their system the U.S. settled down into negotiations
with them and they seem to have nearly hammered out a
compromise, if things don't break down before the loose ends
are tied up.

To be honest, Mike, I have a little bit of a different
interpretation than this, after watching this fairly closely the
last several years. The Europeans pushing Galileo (which is
subset of the European interested parties) there were some
substantial policy and economic arguments in Europe against
Gaileo that I've seen), seemed to intentionally set up the
Galileo frequency structure by putting their public code
directly on top of the US military code, as if they wanted to
ensure that the US could never jam the Galileo signal, without
also taking down the US military precision. This frequency plan
had not been coordinated with either NATO (since it came out of
the EC, not even the nascent military arm of the EU, which I
note is not the same as NATO), nor the US. One interpretation
of this was it a political ploy to ensure purchasers of European
Galileo-equipped military equipment that they would not be
selectively jammed, without taking down US/ NATO equipment using
GPS.

The US has always said they wanted to coordinate about the
frequencies and signal modulation used on the Galileo system,
and had started contacting the Europeans about doing so starting
back in October of 2000, but had not gotten any response from
the Europeans to actually sit down and talk about this until a few
months ago. Once they started seriously talking, the issue was
resolved in a few months. But why did it take the Europeans
almost 3 years to sit down and talk with the US?

The issue had arisen as the Galileo
experts had picked a different BOC 2,2 modulation scheme which
was of much wider bandwidth than the US system and overlaid the
US frequencies for their services. The wider BOC 2,2 approach
is more robust, so jamming that wide of a signal would take down
everything, including public and military/ regulated services.
And by overlaying their frequencies around the US military
frequencies, you could not take one down without taking the other
down as well. The key compromise was for the EC to agree to go
to a BOC 1,1 or BOC 1.5, 1.5 modulation which allowed both sides
to be satisfied. In return the US agreed to go to a BOC 1,1 signal
modulation design for GPS III (the next generation of GPS
satellites to be launched starting in 2012). This appears to be
a true compromise, in that the US changed how is it going to be
designing and operating the US GPS system, putting the US
signal on the same standard as the Europeans which should make
it a lot easier to design dual GPS/ Galileo receivers and
chipsets for such receivers. Users worldwide might see
substantially increased accuracy and reliability from having 50
satellites in space they can use, instead of the couple of dozen
from each separate constellation.

As I said in the past, I thought this issue was something that
could be resolved best by both sides sitting down and talking
through the relative frequency issues. And I think they have.
The unfortunate rhetoric from the EU that this was "US
Imperialism" to prevent Galileo from happening was just that..
rhetoric used to help push European funding for the Galileo
system.

However, I still think there is a big disconnect in the European
plans for Galileo. As set out now, Galileo is still planned as
a Public/Private Partnership (PPP) with substantial private and
commercial investment into the constellation, to the tune of
billions of Euros. And as of yet, no business plan or structure
has been defined that would justify the investment of private or
commercial funds into the Galileo. The issue is still the US is
planning on providing the GPS signal free of charge in the
future, while some means has to be found to charge for the
Galileo signal to justify a return on the commercial/ private
investment into Galileo.

My reading of the future says this will come back up in a few
years as either a revisit to the issue of making Galileo totally
a publicly financed and operated venture (as is GPS), or else
potentially a major trade issue between the EU and the US. The
trade issue would arise as the easiest solution to get the
return for the Galileo signal is to require an annual license
fee for operating a Galileo receiver. But why would any non-
government user select a more costly Galileo receiver instead of
one using the free GPS signal? Since the Galileo is backed by
the EC, it would be fairly simple politically to mandate that
only Galileo receivers could be used in the EU ? which would now
restrict other systems (such as GPS or GLONASS) from being sold
in the market, which is now restraint of trade. I think this
will turn out to be a significant issue because in the end
80-90% of the satellite navigation market is commercial, in that
the military buys relatively few GPS receivers compared to
commercial applications. So anything that restricts the
commercial usage of one technology over another strictly for
national political reasons can become a significant trade issue.

My opinion is that the EU will eventually offer the Galileo as a
free public service like GPS, but the system so far has been
sold to the European governments as being something that will
not require substantial funding since they will get commercial/
private investments for the operational constellation. Providing
the Galileo signal as a free public service will maximize the
commercial utilization globally, avoid any trade issues, and
probably do the most to promote Galileo as a commercially
successful system. But to do this, I think the European nations
are going to have to seriously reconsider the current PPP model
for Galileo and and step up to funding the system like the US
government has done for GPS.

The recent agreement on frequencies and signal standards is a
good step forwards to a common global satellite navigation
system, but the discussion is not yet over.