Civilians Can Use Military GPS Data
Dateline: 05/03/00
President Clinton announced on Monday that he had ordered the U.S. military to stop scrambling signals from its Global Position System (GPS) satellite network, thus making the data available to civilian GPS owners. This action will allow boaters, motorists and hikers using GPS receivers to enjoy the far more precise positioning data previously available only to the military.
For additional information, see the Interagency GPS Executive Board Web Site.
The following is a copy of the White House fact sheet released on the GPS action.
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release -- May 1, 2000
President Clinton:
Improving the Civilian Global Positioning System (GPS)
May 1, 2000
"The decision to discontinue Selective Availability is the
latest measure in an ongoing effort to make GPS more responsive to civil and
commercial users worldwide. --This increase in accuracy will allow new GPS
applications to emerge and continue to enhance the lives of people around the
world."
President Bill Clinton
May 1, 2000
GPS IS A CRITICAL TECHNOLOGY FOR INDIVIDUALS AND BUSINESSES AROUND THE
GLOBE.
GPS is a dual-use system, providing highly accurate positioning and timing data
for both military and civilian users. There are more than 4 million GPS
users world wide, and the market for GPS applications is expected to double in
the next three years, from $8 billion to over $16 billion. Some of these
applications include: air, road, rail, and marine navigation, precision agriculture and mining, oil exploration,
environmental research and management, telecommunications, electronic data
transfer, construction, recreation and emergency response.
GPS IS THE GLOBAL STANDARD.
GPS has always been the dominant standard satellite navigation system thanks to
the U.S. policy of making both the signal and the receiver design specification
available to the public completely free of charge.
NEW TECHNOLOGIES ENHANCE AMERICA'S NATIONAL SECURITY.
The U.S. previously employed a technique called Selective Availability (SA) to
globally degrade the civilian GPS signal. New technologies demonstrated by the military enable the U.S. to degrade the GPS signal on a regional
basis. GPS users worldwide would not be affected by regional,
security-motivated, GPS degradations, and businesses reliant on GPS could
continue to operate at peak efficiency.
GPS IMPROVED SIGNAL WILL BRING INSTANT BENEFITS TO MILLIONS OF GPS
USERS.
It's rare that someone can press a button and make something you already own
worth more, but that's exactly what's happening today. As of midnight
tonight, all the people who've bought GPS receivers for boats, cars, or
recreation will find that they are ten times more accurate.
The technology that makes this extraordinary technology possible grows directly from our past research investments in basic physics, mathematics, and engineering supported from NSF, DARPA, NIST and other Federal agencies over a period of decades. GPS works because of super reliable atomic clocks -- no mechanical device could come close. These clocks resulted from Nobel-prize winning physics, and creative engineering that managed to package devices which once filled large physics laboratories into a compact, reliable, space-worthy device. The improved, non-degraded signal will increase civilian accuracy by an order of magnitude, and have immediate implications in areas such as:
- Car Navigation: Previously, a GPS-based car navigation could give the location of the vehicle to within a hundred meters. This was a problem, for example, in areas where multiple highways run in parallel, because the degraded signal made it difficult to determine which one the car was on. Terminating SA will eliminate such problems, leading to greater consumer confidence in the technology and higher adoption rates. It will also simplify the design of many systems (e.g., eliminate certain map matching software), thereby lowering their retail cost.
- Enhanced-911: The FCC will soon require that all new cellular phones be equipped with more accurate location determination technology to improve responses to emergency 911 calls. Removing SA will boost the accuracy of GPS to such a degree that it could become the method of choice for implementing the 911 requirement. A GPS-based solution might be simpler and more economical than alternative techniques such as radio tower triangulation, leading to lower consumer costs.
- Hiking, Camping, and Hunting: GPS is already popular among outdoor enthusiasts, but the degraded accuracy has not allowed them to precisely pin-point their location or the location of items (such as game) left behind for later recovery. With 20 meter accuracy or better, hikers, campers, and hunters should be able to navigate their way through unmarked wilderness terrain with increased confidence and safety. Moreover, users will find that the accuracy of GPS exceeds the resolution of U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) topographical quad maps.
- Boating and Fishing: Recreational boaters will enjoy safer, more accurate navigation around sandbars, rocks, and other obstacles. Anglers will be able to more precisely locate their favorite spot on a lake or river. Lobsterers will be able to find and recover their traps more quickly and efficiently.
- Increased Adoption of GPS Time: In addition to more accurate position information, the accuracy of the time data broadcast by GPS will improve to within 40 billionths of a second. Such precision may encourage adoption of GPS as a preferred means of acquiring Universal Coordinated Time (UTC) and for synchronizing everything from electrical power grids and cellular phone towers to telecommunications networks and the Internet. For example, with higher precision timing, a company can stream more data through a fiber optic cable by tightening the space between data packets. Using GPS to accomplish this is far less costly than maintaining private atomic clock equipment.
Additional information about GPS and the Selective Availability decision is available online at the Interagency GPS Executive Board web site: http://www.igeb.gov
Reference Links
List of GPS Manufacturers
List with phone numbers, addresses and Web sites prepared by the U.S. Coast Guard.
President Turns Off GPS Selective Availability
About.com Guide to Geography Matt Rosenberg has a complete report.
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