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I discovered (to my slight surprise) that until November 2018, the FCC of the US of A didn't allow smartphones to use the European "Galileo" alternative to GPS: "American phones couldn’t use Galileo because the FCC has regulations against having ground stations being in contact with foreign satellites".
So picking up a signal, which is there, no matter what you do, is "being in contact with foreign satellites". Not a very intimate form of contact, I'd say!
You US of A guys: How is it nowadays? Do you have Galileo enabled smartphones? What about the Russian Glonass or the Chinese BeiDou? Or is US of A more or less ignoring anything but GPS?
(Bonus question: How many of you answer: "I never was aware of anything but GPS, but now that I check it, I see that I have Galileo as well!")
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How do you check ?
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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Apps like GPS Status display what birds they can see, often colour coded by constellation, or different map symbols. Right now, in my study, my phone can see 56 satellites with 5 different symbols. Labels include
### straight number, probably GPS
j### Japan?
e## Euro? (Galileo)
c## China?
r## Glonass?
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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For Android install this: GPSTest[^] - the "Status" page shows you which GNSS satellites you are using.
You may be able to find similar for Apple, but I don't know.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Note that the download page states support for "GPS (USA Navstar)" only, with not a word's mention of Galileo, Glonass or BeiDou. The page is updated in May, so I guess it is not because the information is outdated.
If it didn't say anything at all about GNSS system support, I'd think that it would show all those that the smartphone supports, but when GPS is mentioned explicitly (as the only one), I'd think that others are not supported.
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For me it shows I'm using US NAVSTAR, Russian GLANASS, and Chinese BeiDou.
It also lists EU Galileo, Japanese QZSS, and Indian IRNSS, but doesn't seem to use them
That may be the Chinese chipset (it's a Huawei P30) doesn't support the Galileo L5 frequency, just the older L1.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Some years ago, there was a serious concern about putting all eggs into the GPS basket. Several countries (/groups) argued in favor of keeping alive some alternative navigation system, such as Loran-C in its modern enhanced form, eLoran, with a precision of 3-8 m (depending on who you ask).
Lots of people argue that there is no need for Loran: If GPS fails, we can use GLONASS. If that fails, too, there is Galileo. And BeiDou. And QZSS. And IRNSS. So all plans for eLoran deployment were canceled.
But all these systems have roughly the same failure modes, at least partially. A high-intensity magnetic storm could knock them all out. Then can all be deafened by noise transmitters in roughly the same frequency range. If a terrorist group have the means to e.g. shoot down the satellites of one of the systems, chances are that it may do the same to them all; they are quite similar.
I would relax a lot if we (re)established a backup navigation system based on a significantly different technology, with different failure modes. eLoran is probably the best candidate. It appears that funding fathers of today think one basket of eggs is enough. I do not like to think of the effects of a real geomagnetic blast. If we one day experience it, there will be a worldwide hunt for scapegoats who haven't provided any sort of alternate system. (If the storm is bad enough, it may knock out Loran as well, but the GNSS satellites are magnitudes more vulnerable!)
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trønderen wrote: It appears that funding fathers of today think one basket of eggs is enough
Always the way.
Way back in the 90's, Perrier was the top bottled water provider - if you drank mineral water anywhere in the world, 95% of it was Perrier.
Then they had a contamination problem (Benzene) and realised that they had no idea where the contaminated water was - they didn't code the bottles, case, or pallets at all so they couldn't identify the good ones from the bad ones. So they sat on it. Until a whistleblower dropped them in it, and they had to do a recall.
Of every single bottle of Perrier, world wide.
It took weeks to get clean supplies back into shops, and in the meantime people tried their local variants and wondered why they were paying so much for Perrier.
After the recall, they only got back up to 20% of the water market.
And nobody else coded either because it was deemed not vital to the business - but suddenly the board of directors wanted to know why they didn't, and what it was going to cost. They wrote some very big (and inflated) cheques, very quickly and started a massive boom in coding and marking (of everything!) which is still a huge business today.
Then in 2002 a Large British Biscuit manufacturer found that a flour filter had disintegrated on an hourly check. The line was stopped, the current batch was scrapped and because they coded and tracked every packet they turned round every lorry with a single biscuit that might have been contaminated on it. Not one reached a shop, let alone a customer.
That's the power of hindsight - money doesn't get spent until something goes wrong! Stupid, I know ...
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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I bought my current smartphone half a year before Galileo services was officially released to public use (and it was probably manufactured half a year before that). It has GPS support only, and not even a very precise one (accuracy typical 8-12 m). The raw phone doesn't have anything but an on-off switch for GPS, no other status info.
I am not familiar with newer models, so I can't tell how you check yours.
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Edit - I misread your post and thought the question is about GPS receivers in general instead of smartphones specifically.
Not sure what is the source of your info, but considering that all professional grade GPS receivers (Trimble, Leica, Hemisphere, etc.) can receive all the navigation satellites out there, I very much doubt that there is such regulation or that it is enforced.
Mircea
modified 24-Jun-23 8:09am.
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My quote was from TechCrunch[^], reference [187] in English Wikipedia: Galileo (satellite navigation)[^]. The Wikipedia article discusses the issue to some extent.
Apparently, there was such a regulation until November 2018. As the TechCrunch article discusses, enforcement was almost impossible. E.g. although most smartphone manufacturers for the US of A market disabled software support in phones that had hardware support, an app might unlock it. I have seen no indication of any such regulation being in effect as of today.
There are numerous examples of hardware support for some technology, not made available to the user. This may be due to national regulations (such as for Galileo pre 2018), or pure marketing: The manufacturer wants to reserve some functions for premium products, or to force the customer to buy a new product at a later time.
One example: When DAB digital radio was introduced in Europe, there were only a small handful of DAB chip makers. All of them made chips supporting DRM, the digital radio standard for "the AM bands", now a major broadcasting technology in India. Lots of DAB radios used those DRM capable chips - but provided no button or menu option to select this band! If all (/most) DAB receivers had given access to DRM, DRM might have been a reality in Europe as well, after a series of successful trial transmissions. Radio manufacturers hoped for a DRM success, so that they a few years later could sell new receivers to the the market (maybe they would use the same chips, but omit a selector for DAB!). With no consumer receivers on the market, no broadcaster went for DRM.
I wouldn't at all be surprised if Galileo was used for market manipulation in a similar way, in principle being available, but only to a selected group willing to pay a premium price for it.
What I really is concerned about is not smartphones in particular, but how vulnerable the US society is to a hypothetical complete GPS failure, e.g. as a result of a sabotage/terror action. One part is the civil society. Another question: Has USAF fallen down to the level of including a foreign GNSS system as a backup, in case their own GPS becomes unusable? This is all speculation, so to try to find some more tangible information, I asked about smartphones.
Here Norway/Europe, we are close to a state where we would hardly notice if every single GPS satellite was shot down tonight. (My late winter/spring 2016 smartphone is like a museum artifact that doesn't count for this purpose.) I sort of suspect that the US of A society might be harder hit. I ask because I am not sure about that.
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trønderen wrote: Another question: Has USAF fallen down to the level of including a foreign GNSS system as a backup, in case their own GPS becomes unusable? This is all speculation, so to try to find some more tangible information, I asked about smartphones.
Let me tell you a story from the early '90es, also the early GPS years:
The initial GPS system was designed with a feature called "selective availability" (SA) that could degrade the civilian signal to about 100m, if I recall correctly. When the first Gulf War started in '91 we were all expecting the SA to be turned on and wondering how we will cope with the reduced accuracy. It turned out that not only Air Force didn't turn SA on, they even did the utmost to have the ephemerides as accurate as possible. It turned out the US forces didn't have enough military grade GPS receivers that could be used to decode the military P-code and had to use commercial grade GPS receivers. It took however another 10 years or so until Clinton administration finally finally killed the SA "feature".
Obviously I don't know anything about the plans and the readiness state of US military, but past examples don't show them as being infallible planners.
What I can tell you that the vast majority of professional GPS units used in Canada for land and marine surveying are 2 (GPS and GLONASS) or more systems. Newer receivers that I've seen are 4-system units (GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, Baidu) with 30 or more channels. Some units go up to hundreds of receiver channels. Here, in Canada, having GLONASS is seen as a desirable feature as it operates better in high latitudes.
Given that no one makes products specifically for Canadian market, the same applies for US market.
Mircea
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Mircea Neacsu wrote: It took however another 10 years or so until Clinton administration finally finally killed the SA "feature".
With the feature dead, does that mean that the civilian signal is as accurate as the military one? Not sure I understand what you said.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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Yes, exactly. Probably someone figured out that if a missile goes boom 10 meters or 100 meters away, doesn’t make much of a difference. 😀
One added irony: Coast Guard, which is another branch of the military, placed beacons for something called “differential GPS” (DGPS) all along the US coast. That brings the accuracy down to sub-meter. Go figure!
Mircea
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No, there's still a difference in accuracy.
Civilian equipment can not access all frequencies transmitted by the satellites, the other frequencies are encrypted. and therefore does not have full compensation for ionospheric disturbances.
Quote: Since Selective Availability was turned off, the main operational difference between the civilian and military systems (SPS vs PPS) is the availability of a L2 for real time removal of the ionosphere.
The resulting difference is the the ability of your car GPS keeping you on the right street or a missile being sent through the correct window
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The only thing the FCC is good at is overstepping it's bounds.
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The only thing any FCC government is good at is overstepping it's bounds.
FTFY
>64
Some days the dragon wins. Suck it up.
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The real reason behind this restriction was exactly GLONASS. A few years ago, russinas wanted to install their ground stations in the US. That's why these regulations have been created.
Advertise here – minimum three posts per day are guaranteed.
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I do not immediately see the link from premise to conclusion. (Yet you may be right.)
Also, if GLONASS ground stations were located in the US of A, wouldn't that, in a conflict situation, give the US of A quite an advantage, being able to prevent the personnel from doing necessary maintenance?
(I have tried to find more info about the Russians wanting Glonass ground stations in the US. The search is still unsuccessful. I am curious, so if you have a link or two, please present them!)
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The ground stations are the once that are giving pinpoint precision of the geo navigation. This will allow russians to precisely map the entire US. Which is not kosher given that the GPS is purposely distorting some coordinates to prevent this.
Advertise here – minimum three posts per day are guaranteed.
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It still doesn't make sense to me. Long before GPS, in this country (Norway) you could buy ordinary orienteering maps where every stone could be located with centimeter precision. 1:5000 orienteering maps were generally available "everywhere" even in the 1970s, and if you go to the city administration to get a map the lot of your house, you'll get a 1:1000 scale map. You don't need to build a Glonass ground station for that.
Also: GPS is not giving coordinates as such; it is providing (very!) precisely timed signal. The receiver determines its position by comparing the timing of at least three different signals. A satellite could distort the coordinates by fouling up the timing of its signals, but then every receiver would read a distorted position, regardless of his coordinates. You cannot foul up the timing for only a few selected coordinates.
I very much doubt that the Russians did not have a quite precise map of the entire US long before Glonass was put into operation. They've had a space program since Sputnik 1, and properly placing Glonass satellites in space is not a task done with steel wire and duct tape. They do have quite sophisticated technology, whether we like it or not. There is no reason to believe that they need a handful of ground stations in the US of A to learn where it it is located  . Not today, and not when GLONASS was established.
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To the best of my knowledge maps are intentionally not precise when it comes to strategic locations (including Cities). And few meters off is quite enough to throw off targeting systems based on coordinates (or your car GPS locator). This could be corrected using satellites, but the russian qeo-imaging/Synthetic-aperture satellites are garbage - IIRC with resolution as low as 400 meters. So, they need those stations to pinpoint certain buildings\objects and for dynamic targeting.
Advertise here – minimum three posts per day are guaranteed.
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Not 100% about Beidu, but Glonass wouldn't even remotely work in the USA to begin with. They have problems even covering the whole of the former USSR or any significant part of Western Europe.
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at first using some top GPS status app, only saw the China one?
then tried GPSTest gave me US of A one.
then 5 minutes later, showed China
and 5 minutes more, as about to write up that on google phone 6, only USA and China, and then European one started
relieved, thought was in some dabger bubble
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With the satellites moving at quite high speed across the sky, them coming and going is expected. Signal strength varies from second to second with varying conditions in the upper atmosphere (ionosphere). If you are indoors, signals are usually significantly weaker, and may change e.g. when a person walks across the floor above you.
Picking up BeiDou only (for a short period of time) may be somewhat surprising, but may be a combination of random events and e.g. that the GNSS tuner in your smartphone may be slightly more sensitive to the BeiDou frequencies than the GPS ones, or that the ionosphere affected the frequencies differently. Or that your phone, when you turn the GNSS logic on, looks for satellites in a given order, BeiDou before GPS before Galileo.
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