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> which is operated by the US military with an annual budget of roughly $1B -- and we can all use it for free. Non-Americans, yes, but Americans pay taxes to u

by xyzzyz 5y ago

> which is operated by the US military with an annual budget of roughly $1B -- and we can all use it for free. Non-Americans, yes, but Americans pay taxes to use it. In fact, if you replaced tax-funded model with, say, a markup on each receiver, Americans would pay less than they already do, and only those that use it would pay for it. I find both of these things beneficial. > Had the US not provided for civilian access to GPS, and instead there were several competing private systems, they would all be worse Why, though? Why would they be worse? Typically, when you have even two competitors, the quality is improved. > and every application which is today based on GPS would have an additional monthly fee to access whichever private constellation that application had built around. You are lacking imagination. It’s like saying that if government stops providing internet connectivity for free, every application accessing the internet will charge monthly fee. Alas, government does not provide free internet, but nevertheless, apps don’t charge consumers for ingress/egress. As it happens, businesses are pretty good at coming up with business models convenient to users. Google could, for example, easily cover the entire cost of GPS completely on its own, and offer free Google Maps, which would easily outcompete other map apps if they charged money for use. Considering how much they pay for being default search engine on Apple, $1B is a pittance.

nemothekid 5y ago
>Typically, when you have even two competitors, the quality is improved. It's hard to argue this is the case, especially for businesses that require a significant amount of upfront capital. The trivial example in utilities are ISPs. You can argue that ISPs are not a "free market" because of the government doing X, Y, Z, but if it's the case that government intervention is required anyways, then removing the profit motive and having the government just build seems preferable. >Considering how much they pay for being default search engine on Apple, $1B is a pittance. The $1B number is a red herring. It cost them $1B to maintain the system. The costs of acquiring rockets and designing satellites, as a private company, is likely far greater. Secondly in the case of Google Maps, that product doesn't exist as it's own standalone business, but as one that was largely subsidized by another, more grossly profitable business. The question you should ask would if a company like Waze (pre-acquisition of course) could have built the infrastructure for GPS. The answer is likely no. Edit: Thinking about this more, there is a trivial counter-example to your point about being charged egress on the internet, and it's just Google Maps. Google did the work of mapping a huge amount of the US, and generally has the highest quality maps. If you wanted to use that data, much like a business uses GPS, Google charges an fee which has been often derided as exorbitant. Even in the face of new competitors like Apple Maps and OpenStreetMaps, Google has even increased prices. I feel we would be worse off if GPS was privatized like this as this would put companies like Uber, Flexport, and Waze at the mercy of a single profit driven "competitor". The "App Store" but for GPS doesn't sound like a better alternative.
- xyzzyz 5y ago
  > It's hard to argue this is the case, especially for businesses that require a significant amount of upfront capital. There is plenty of capital to be had these days, and a lot of competition in many capital-intensive industries. For example, we have multiple competitors in cloud computing space, despite it requiring ten of billions of dollars in capital to enter. The ISPs, and utilities in general are different not because they are simply capital intensive, but rather because they have low marginal return for marginal unit of capital spent, and because competition damages these return even higher. Launching a few satellites to provide service globally is a different sort of capital expense than painstakingly building out utilities every street and every block. > The $1B number is a red herring. It cost them $1B to maintain the system. The costs of acquiring rockets and designing satellites, as a private company, is likely far greater. Sure, which is why there has been no competition to GPS so far. However, SpaceX, now that it already has rocket and satellite expertise, could provide competition to Government GPS relatively easily. > The question you should ask would if a company like Waze (pre-acquisition of course) could have built the infrastructure for GPS. The answer is likely no. No, but they would simply buy license to use GPS, just like they bought license to use maps. No reason to pass these costs to users directly as a line item in a bill. That’s my point: there is no reason to believe that privately owned GPS would diminish the user experience. As I already mentioned, instead of subscription fees that people lacking business imagination keep bringing up, you could for example charge royalties per GPS receiver sold, you know, the way Android phones already pay dozens of dollars in royalties.
kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
> Why, though? They'd be subscription services.
- xyzzyz 5y ago
  Maybe, or maybe not (most likely not, in fact). Have you read the rest of my comment?
- Jtsummers 5y ago
  There is, practically, no model in which GPS subscriptions make sense without enabling bidirectional communications with the satellite. GPS modules (ground side) do not need transmitters, only receivers and, potentially, a decryption module (soft or hardware). A subscription GPS system with bidirectional communication (to authenticate users) would have grossly inefficient devices (transmitting to space is not cheap, plus the incurred latency on the communication). But that's the only way to enforce a subscription. Subscription GPS systems with unidirectional communications (down only) would be cracked in about 5 minutes. Every authorized device would have to share the same key for it to be practical, which means even with key rotation schemes (sucks to be in the wilderness without internet connectivity for an extended period in this case) the keys would be on every device and trivially recovered. The only way a unidirectional communication scheme works is if the GPS devices are already internet connected on the ground side, which largely defeats the purpose of GPS in many situations (at least historically, before widespread cellular data networks). You certainly couldn't use this effectively at sea or when hiking through the backcountry.
  - withinboredom 5y ago
    Little known fact, if you do have the GPS decryption module, you get way better sensitivity and spoofing protection. But you have to be the US military[1]. 1: https://militaryembedded.com/comms/encryption/securing-military-gps-spoofing-jamming-vulnerabilities https://militaryembedded.com/comms/encryption/securing-milit...
orangeoxidation 5y ago
> Why, though? Why would they be worse? Typically, when you have even two competitors, the quality is improved. > Typically, when you have even two competitors, the quality is improved. If those state services weren't available for the public they would exist anyway, they are primarily for military purpose. Imagine the US didn't offer free GPS and civilian competition would arise. Wouldn't it just mean the US users would have to pay for two satellite services? Once for the military one, once for the civilian. Since cost does not increase with users, the military (tax supported) one wouldn't be cheaper to run either. Apart from that there are competitors even today. My smartphone does connect to Galileo, Glonass and GPS.
- xyzzyz 5y ago
  In that world, military would just contract with commercial providers and use commercial GPS, same way they already spend hundreds of billions of dollars on products and services provided by private companies.
  - jppittma 5y ago
    I can't imagine how one would think that's better than the current situation. Military contracts with commercial providers are an absolute nightmare. Is this not what even libertarians denounce as "crony capitalism?"
    - xyzzyz 5y ago
      Most of technology procurement that military does is through commercial providers. This means that if there is a nightmare project, it will most likely be a done with a commercial partner, because most projects are done with commercial partners. On the other hand, there are plenty military contracts with commercial businesses which aren’t nightmares. For example, US military has a contract with Samsung for mobile devices. It is most definitely not a nightmare. Government buying from private businesses is no what “crony capitalism” means.
abeppu 5y ago
> Why, though? Why would they be worse? Typically, when you have even two competitors, the quality is improved. I think the key points are: - because there would be fragmentation, we might have several smaller private services, each with crappier coverage because of fewer satellites in each, different variance in clocks, etc - because GPS _doesn't_ need to worry about collecting revenue from users, you don't have to prove you're a subscriber to use it. Every GPS device you have doesn't have to be linked to your account. And you don't have to worry that e.g. your phone and your car partnered with different satnav services and so now you need two subscriptions _and_ they don't play together, etc. I think it's not that hard to imagine casual consumer applications where the product benefit of incorporating satellite-based location services would become swamped by the overhead of connecting to your preferred location service.
abeppu 5y ago
If competition makes stuff better, and a large company like Google can make one at "a pittance", it's worth asking -- why isn't there a privately created global satellite navigation system yet? GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO were created and are operated by state institutions.
- xyzzyz 5y ago
  Because there is one already, and it’s free to use. If government hadn’t paid for it, you’d see much more competition in the space. For comparison, ask why no company has built a cheap, fast satellite internet yet? Apparently, some are building them right now.
wumpus 5y ago
> In fact, if you replaced tax-funded model with, say, a markup on each receiver, GPS isn't technically designed to do that, the open signal is open. And if you did it, the cost of a receiver would go up because it would have to be more sophisticated. Galileo tried to do this business model and failed.
teddyh 5y ago
> Non-Americans, yes, but Americans pay taxes to use it. Yes, but non-Americans also pay, by living in a world with America, in particular the US military, in it. So the cost is spread fairly evenly, I’d say.
wolverine876 5y ago
I don't think we can assume one model or another, government or business, would work better; do we have any evidence? GPS has worked out pretty well. > if you replaced tax-funded model with, say, a markup on each receiver, Americans would pay less than they already do What is that based on? Americans pay a few dollars per year.

by xyzzyz 5y ago

nemothekid 5y ago

>Typically, when you have even two competitors, the quality is improved. It's hard to argue this is the case, especially for businesses that require a significant amount of upfront capital. The trivial example in utilities are ISPs. You can argue that ISPs are not a "free market" because of the government doing X, Y, Z, but if it's the case that government intervention is required anyways, then removing the profit motive and having the government just build seems preferable. >Considering how much they pay for being default search engine on Apple, $1B is a pittance. The $1B number is a red herring. It cost them $1B to maintain the system. The costs of acquiring rockets and designing satellites, as a private company, is likely far greater. Secondly in the case of Google Maps, that product doesn't exist as it's own standalone business, but as one that was largely subsidized by another, more grossly profitable business. The question you should ask would if a company like Waze (pre-acquisition of course) could have built the infrastructure for GPS. The answer is likely no. Edit: Thinking about this more, there is a trivial counter-example to your point about being charged egress on the internet, and it's just Google Maps. Google did the work of mapping a huge amount of the US, and generally has the highest quality maps. If you wanted to use that data, much like a business uses GPS, Google charges an fee which has been often derided as exorbitant. Even in the face of new competitors like Apple Maps and OpenStreetMaps, Google has even increased prices. I feel we would be worse off if GPS was privatized like this as this would put companies like Uber, Flexport, and Waze at the mercy of a single profit driven "competitor". The "App Store" but for GPS doesn't sound like a better alternative.

xyzzyz 5y ago
> It's hard to argue this is the case, especially for businesses that require a significant amount of upfront capital. There is plenty of capital to be had these days, and a lot of competition in many capital-intensive industries. For example, we have multiple competitors in cloud computing space, despite it requiring ten of billions of dollars in capital to enter. The ISPs, and utilities in general are different not because they are simply capital intensive, but rather because they have low marginal return for marginal unit of capital spent, and because competition damages these return even higher. Launching a few satellites to provide service globally is a different sort of capital expense than painstakingly building out utilities every street and every block. > The $1B number is a red herring. It cost them $1B to maintain the system. The costs of acquiring rockets and designing satellites, as a private company, is likely far greater. Sure, which is why there has been no competition to GPS so far. However, SpaceX, now that it already has rocket and satellite expertise, could provide competition to Government GPS relatively easily. > The question you should ask would if a company like Waze (pre-acquisition of course) could have built the infrastructure for GPS. The answer is likely no. No, but they would simply buy license to use GPS, just like they bought license to use maps. No reason to pass these costs to users directly as a line item in a bill. That’s my point: there is no reason to believe that privately owned GPS would diminish the user experience. As I already mentioned, instead of subscription fees that people lacking business imagination keep bringing up, you could for example charge royalties per GPS receiver sold, you know, the way Android phones already pay dozens of dollars in royalties.

kevin_thibedeau 5y ago

> Why, though? They'd be subscription services.

xyzzyz 5y ago
Maybe, or maybe not (most likely not, in fact). Have you read the rest of my comment?
Jtsummers 5y ago
There is, practically, no model in which GPS subscriptions make sense without enabling bidirectional communications with the satellite. GPS modules (ground side) do not need transmitters, only receivers and, potentially, a decryption module (soft or hardware). A subscription GPS system with bidirectional communication (to authenticate users) would have grossly inefficient devices (transmitting to space is not cheap, plus the incurred latency on the communication). But that's the only way to enforce a subscription. Subscription GPS systems with unidirectional communications (down only) would be cracked in about 5 minutes. Every authorized device would have to share the same key for it to be practical, which means even with key rotation schemes (sucks to be in the wilderness without internet connectivity for an extended period in this case) the keys would be on every device and trivially recovered. The only way a unidirectional communication scheme works is if the GPS devices are already internet connected on the ground side, which largely defeats the purpose of GPS in many situations (at least historically, before widespread cellular data networks). You certainly couldn't use this effectively at sea or when hiking through the backcountry.
- withinboredom 5y ago
  Little known fact, if you do have the GPS decryption module, you get way better sensitivity and spoofing protection. But you have to be the US military[1]. 1: https://militaryembedded.com/comms/encryption/securing-military-gps-spoofing-jamming-vulnerabilities https://militaryembedded.com/comms/encryption/securing-milit...

orangeoxidation 5y ago

> Why, though? Why would they be worse? Typically, when you have even two competitors, the quality is improved. > Typically, when you have even two competitors, the quality is improved. If those state services weren't available for the public they would exist anyway, they are primarily for military purpose. Imagine the US didn't offer free GPS and civilian competition would arise. Wouldn't it just mean the US users would have to pay for two satellite services? Once for the military one, once for the civilian. Since cost does not increase with users, the military (tax supported) one wouldn't be cheaper to run either. Apart from that there are competitors even today. My smartphone does connect to Galileo, Glonass and GPS.

xyzzyz 5y ago
In that world, military would just contract with commercial providers and use commercial GPS, same way they already spend hundreds of billions of dollars on products and services provided by private companies.
- jppittma 5y ago
  I can't imagine how one would think that's better than the current situation. Military contracts with commercial providers are an absolute nightmare. Is this not what even libertarians denounce as "crony capitalism?"
  - xyzzyz 5y ago
    Most of technology procurement that military does is through commercial providers. This means that if there is a nightmare project, it will most likely be a done with a commercial partner, because most projects are done with commercial partners. On the other hand, there are plenty military contracts with commercial businesses which aren’t nightmares. For example, US military has a contract with Samsung for mobile devices. It is most definitely not a nightmare. Government buying from private businesses is no what “crony capitalism” means.

abeppu 5y ago

> Why, though? Why would they be worse? Typically, when you have even two competitors, the quality is improved. I think the key points are: - because there would be fragmentation, we might have several smaller private services, each with crappier coverage because of fewer satellites in each, different variance in clocks, etc - because GPS _doesn't_ need to worry about collecting revenue from users, you don't have to prove you're a subscriber to use it. Every GPS device you have doesn't have to be linked to your account. And you don't have to worry that e.g. your phone and your car partnered with different satnav services and so now you need two subscriptions _and_ they don't play together, etc. I think it's not that hard to imagine casual consumer applications where the product benefit of incorporating satellite-based location services would become swamped by the overhead of connecting to your preferred location service.

abeppu 5y ago

If competition makes stuff better, and a large company like Google can make one at "a pittance", it's worth asking -- why isn't there a privately created global satellite navigation system yet? GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO were created and are operated by state institutions.

xyzzyz 5y ago
Because there is one already, and it’s free to use. If government hadn’t paid for it, you’d see much more competition in the space. For comparison, ask why no company has built a cheap, fast satellite internet yet? Apparently, some are building them right now.

wumpus 5y ago

> In fact, if you replaced tax-funded model with, say, a markup on each receiver, GPS isn't technically designed to do that, the open signal is open. And if you did it, the cost of a receiver would go up because it would have to be more sophisticated. Galileo tried to do this business model and failed.

teddyh 5y ago

> Non-Americans, yes, but Americans pay taxes to use it. Yes, but non-Americans also pay, by living in a world with America, in particular the US military, in it. So the cost is spread fairly evenly, I’d say.

wolverine876 5y ago

I don't think we can assume one model or another, government or business, would work better; do we have any evidence? GPS has worked out pretty well. > if you replaced tax-funded model with, say, a markup on each receiver, Americans would pay less than they already do What is that based on? Americans pay a few dollars per year.