Do we need a European Global Navigation Satellite System?
It’s been a busy week in British politics with the Blair-Brown handover at number 10, and a few security breeches thrown in for good measure; but look carefully, and in amongst the hullabaloo you’ll find a geospatial debate on the floor of the commons…
Do we need a European Global Navigation Satellite System?
TheyWorkForYou have done a great job of harvesting the Hansard and have made a readable transcript of the debate available online, you can check it out here. Obviously it’s good to see this stuff being discussed, but despite the somewhat informed discussion, members of parliament appear to tow the party line regardless; one lot are pro-European and therefore emphatically pro-Galileo, the other shower of bastards vehemently anti-European, and therefore equally anti-Galileo.
Galileo seems to have hit the rocks after the funding model for the project showed its true colours. In some sort of magic third way PPP\PFI buy-now, pay later scheme - so in vogue at the moment - it was initially envisaged that the private sector would contribute to somewhere near a third of the costs for such a system. For me, there are two chief reasons why I believe expecting a contribution from the private sector to fund this thing is pie in the sky…
First up, the Americans have developed GPS and provide free access for all, so rather crudely speaking, the argument goes “why sell Pepsi, when you can have coke for free?” - GPS is here, it works well, and it’s free.
Ok, so some say Galileo will be better, and I’m sure this is possible; but still, do we really expect business to pay for this upfront? To my mind this is the stuff of fantasy, business works for today and so often heavily discounts the future; for example, consider the following two statements:
“Today Google has joined forces with Salesforce.com to sell content based advertising”
“Google has invested $1billion in Galileo, the European Sat Nav system. On the back of this investment, it’s estimated that sales in location based advertising will quadruple, at some point after 2014 when Galileo will go live.”
Which statement will move the share price? The first! And it’s for this reason that it’s naive to expect the private sector to stump up money to fund Galileo, since any returns won’t materialise for a long, long time.
The debate is well worth a read; and now I’m going to try something new…a poll. For sure, it’s a little naff, but anyhow…if you’re one of my regular three readers…go on, vote 
So if we accept that the private sector won’t invest cash up front…
Should Europe proceed and build Galileo with taxpayers’ money?
Loading …
4 Comments, Comment or Ping
Morten
You are still missing one important fact (and most seem to do when they argue whether we need Galileo or not).
NAVSTAR is owned and controlled by the US Military, and they still hold the right to turn it off, re-enable SA or whatever else they feel like.
Some of these things are unlikely to happen (although we did see SA enabled locally over Iraq), this poses one big problem: We can’t rely 100% on it. Today we could fly planes navigated by GPS, but for these reasons no one is willing to rely on it, although it could increate the safety significantly.
Galileo on the other hand is controlled by private companies (well at least it used to, I’m not sure what the current state is now) and is designed from ground up not to be disabled or crippled in any way. Furthermore they will provide a lot better coverage on the higher latitude than GPS does.
Another thing worth remembering… NAVSTAR is now upgrading their satelittes and increasing the power and accuracy. I wonder whether this would have happened if we didn’t have the Galileo project. Competition is rarely a bad thing for the consumer.
Jul 5th, 2007
Christian
is there any guarantee that, in the long term, coke is available and for free?
besides, I think that a 100% public funded and controlled Galileo will become sooner or later a political ball in the member states game. a good balanced PPP is essential for a successful Galileo…
Jul 5th, 2007
Rob
Morten \ Christian,
Thanks for the comments.
Valid point Morten; I had given some consideration to the influence the US military have over NAVSTAR, but was reluctant to discuss it for a couple of reasons…
1/ Europe is expecting a contribution from the private sector for Galileo, and it’s the lack of this cash that seems to be causing the problems; but, if the primary purpose of Galileo is national security and independence of the US military, it seems nonsense to rely on private corporations for the cash, and the framework for the project requires a complete overhaul.
2/ If Galileo is to be built, with a larger emphasis on the military component, where is the security for Britain in a navigation system that is shared between the 25 member states of the EU, with a short history of peace and cooperation?
I’m not adverse to the idea of Galileo, but I do think that expecting private companies to stump up for it upfront is a little optimistic.
Rob
Jul 5th, 2007
Reply to “Do we need a European Global Navigation Satellite System?”