Put to a Vote

GPS World’s Leadership Dinner — held during ION-GNSS 2008 in Savannah, Georgia — convoked a lively debate: Would the community gain more from new signals, or from more satellites? A made-up scenario that elicited important insights. Read Part 2 here, and see how the candidates reacted to the election results.

Richard Langley: First question: Since handhelds with SBAS can now get 1-meter accuracy, and many cell phones have assisted GPS, just give us more satellites for increased visibility and signal availability in urban areas; we don’t need any more signals. Agree or disagree?

Yatin Acharya, Satellite Party: The number of consumer users for GPS has significantly grown and will continue growing. The two biggest consumer use cases — for which GPS was not originally intended — are location-based services and emergency calling. If you go into urban canyons or locations where GPS has traditionally not been intended for its great use, we see lots of issues with signals. The biggest is more visibility of satellites. The algorithms that turn on the devices don’t have enough satellites to give good measurements, so you probably don’t get a location fix. More satellites to get us over these problems is something that is definitely needed.

Javad Ashjaee, Signal Party: We are the party of building infrastructure. They are party of building toys. They are worried about finding their friends in the middle of downtown New York. We are the party of building roads, generating accurate maps, growing your food by automating agriculture, synchronizing your power stations. We are even working on automatically landing aircraft to use the air space more efficiently.

It costs $60–70 million to build a GPS satellite, and 200 million is the cost of launching the vehicle, and then add the cost to monitor it and keep it in orbit. In its lifespan it will cost over 300 million dollars. These guys [Satellite Party] have no sense for money. They want to spend $300 million to play their cell phones or do those fox games at night in urban canyons with their 99-cent chipsets, and they want us to spend $300 million.

Instead, we ask about $1 or $2 million to add our signals to whatever it costs. By using the satellites to build infrastructure we are making a moneymaking business — we improve the economy and create jobs. The money will return to the community. With their things it’s nothing, it is gone for their toys.

“We are the party of building infrastructure, building roads, generating
accurate maps, growing your food by automating agriculture,
synchronizing your power stations. We are even working on
automatically landing aircraft to use the air space more efficiently.”
— Javad Ashjaee, the Signal Party

Greg Turetzky, Satellite Party: I would maintain from an economic standpoint that it’s far more cost-effective for our constituents to have more of the same satellites to give them more of the same services that they enjoy today, in more areas, rather than creating new things for which they have no use. Because as I look out into this audience today, I am sure I can find far more people in this audience that own a Garmin or who own a TomTom than who own a tractor, or some other $25,000 survey instrument which cannot be purchased by anyone in this room, unless they own their own company.

“It’s far more cost-effective for our constituents to have more of
the same satellites to give them more of the same services that they
enjoy today, in more areas, rather than creating new things for
which they have no use.” — Greg Turetzky, the Satellite Party

Don Jewell: GNSS risks losing crucial spectrum as other applications clamor for bandwidth. To ensure the future of our industry, we must implement new signals and secure spectrum now. More signals are the urgent need. Your opinion?

David Wither, Signal Party: What is important for the devices being used today, not only for professional applications but also consumer applications, is to take advantage of the existing signals that are already available. It’s very clear that even in dense urban environments, or in areas that are somewhat obstructed, you can get signals. The ability to get these signals will not be solved with the same super-low-cost mentality which exists in the consumer electronics industry. We have a clash of cultures when we try to use what was initially meant for very serious applications — life-critical applications, survey, military — when we try to apply this to what we in the UK call the “cheap and cheerful” consumer electronics mentality. We have the signals today; we’re just not using them.

Per-Ludvig Normark, Satellite Party: GPS is a fantastic tool. It works really, really well wherever it’s available. It’s fantastic. The problem we have is where GPS is not available and that’s where we need to put the focus.

The U.S. has been very kind to provide us — I’m from Europe — with a great service that has cost me nothing in taxpayer money. Russia is doing a really good job today to put even more things in the air. Doesn’t cost me anything. I think its about time that I, as a European, pay a little bit more to get satellites up in the air. It’s all going to benefit everyone. A lot of people including the Japanese will be happy to put a little bit of tax money into throwing up some more satellites. That will be really, really helpful from an availability perspective. Because, remember, where GPS is available, it is really working well.

Delegates Pedro Pedreira (Galileo Supervisory Authority), Philip Mattos
(STMicroelectronics), Peter Grognard (Septentrio), and Donna Reay (GSA)
compare views prior to dinner, debate.