Is GPS Satellite provided Free Service?

[Red Cloud]

I'm talking about GPS phone and device company pay the money to US
Dept of Offense (not
Defense at all) for using GPS Satellite. We know that GPS Satellite
first used as US military
purpose. Then US Dept of Offense said the GPS Satellite is freed to
use.

[Alan Browne]

Receiving GPS signals is absolutely free of charge.

GPS makers (Garmin and so on) do NOT pay a fee to the US gov't.

It is a fantastic gift, free to the world, from the US tax payer.

Originally conceived to be a US DoD system, in the wake of the Soviet
shoot-down of Korean Air 007, President Reagan decided to make GPS
available to all (even enemies) for free.

--
"We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty."
Douglas Adams - (Could have been a GPS engineer).

[matt weber]

On Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:21:05 -0500, Alan Browne
<alan....@FreelunchVideotron.ca> wrote:

>On 2012-02-08 04:37 , Red Cloud wrote:
>>
>> I'm talking about GPS phone and device company pay the money to US
>> Dept of Offense (not
>> Defense at all) for using GPS Satellite. We know that GPS Satellite
>> first used as US military
>> purpose. Then US Dept of Offense said the GPS Satellite is freed to
>> use.
>
>Receiving GPS signals is absolutely free of charge.
>
>GPS makers (Garmin and so on) do NOT pay a fee to the US gov't.
>
>It is a fantastic gift, free to the world, from the US tax payer.
>
>Originally conceived to be a US DoD system, in the wake of the Soviet
>shoot-down of Korean Air 007, President Reagan decided to make GPS
>available to all (even enemies) for free.

And President Clinton decided to make it much more accurate for
civilians by switching off Selective Availabiliy, so CEP is now on the
order of 10 meters without WAAS, whereas with SA it was on the order
of 100 meters.

The most obvious impact of this change was on vehicle navigation
systems. My original Magellan Pathfinder had not only a GPS receiver,
but a gyro compass, and a connection to the vehicles Vss signal, so it
could rely on 'dead reckoning' for short distances. The gyro provided
heading information, and Vss provided both speed and distance
traveled. Very helpful in 'urban canyons'.

(For those unfamiliar with Vss, it is a pulse that occurs each time
part of the drive train does a complete revolutions. Each revolution
represents a specific distance (determined by matching Vss to GPS
distance traveled in the first 100 miles or so of operation by the
Navigation unit).

With Selective Availability off, and WAAS widely available, CEP's are
on the order of 5 meters.

And yes indeed there are absolutely no fees or restrictions on the use
of GPS signals. There are however export restrictions on what
commercial GPS receivers can report in terms of speed and altitude.