China's Beidou GPS-substitute opens to public in Asia

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20852150

by soupboy • 14 years ago

31 53 14 years ago

bbc.co.uk

kalleboo6• 14 years ago

I don't know why anyone would trust this system. China already requires maps to be "fuzzed" for location (if you use Google Maps on your phone in China, your location on the map will be up to 1km wrong), so there doesn't seem to be anything stopping them from doing the same here when they feel it's a sensitive time or area.

wmf2• 14 years ago

The Chinese military will trust it and Chinese consumers will be coerced into using it just like all the other homegrown standards.

kalleboo6• 14 years ago

Originally the american GPS system had a encrypted higher-precision signal for military use, and and an open lower-precision signal for civilian use, which could be independently shut off. One day they decided to open up the full precision to everyone. I don't know if the Chinese system is set up similarly, but it's a possibility that the military gets different data from civilians.

estel• 14 years ago

If the cost of receivers comes down sharply, devices might try to use as many networks as possible to get an accurate fix as rapidly as possible. I can definitely see GPS-Beidou-Galileo together.

celoyd• 14 years ago

Definitely. Mid-range and high-end receivers (for things like ecology surveys and continental drift tracking) integrate GLONASS and GPS already.

I don’t have the RF/SP domain knowledge to back this up, but I speculate that multiple low-end receivers for 2–4 of these networks on a single chip might be more useful in practice than a single good receiver for any one network. In other words, a $20 Galileo chip + a $20 GPS chip might give me a faster time-to-fix than a $40 GPS chip. (In terms of units shipped, most GPS goes into phones, where time-to-fix is way more important than centimeter accuracy.)

kamjam2• 14 years ago

This was my initial impression too, but I got the feeling from the article that the Chinese government probably really don't care if no one else uses it, it's for use by their own military and as a means of "protection" against thew US shutting off GPS services to them - highly critical if they want to build those drones which rely on GPS.

As an aside, how does the US government make money from the GPS? As a consumer, I pay no money, so I can only assume the GPS chip manufacturers pay some sort of royalty fee?

sethg• 14 years ago

The government doesn’t charge anything for GPS: http://www.gps.gov/policy/funding/

michael_miller• 14 years ago

I don't think the purpose was primarily military-related. The US's GPS system can be jammed as is, and I don't see any reason why this system would be any different. GPS satellites are very far up in the atmosphere and thus produce a very weak signal to near-earth. This isn't just a theoretical attack: a few years ago, a truck driver with a GPS jammer accidentally jammed the GPSs of planes above him landing at Newark [1].

I think it's more a matter of national pride issue: to show the world that China doesn't have to rely on the US for technology. Russia's GLONASS system (briefly referenced in the article) is more or less the same thing. The good news is that this system, like GLONASS, will likely improve positioning speed / reliability, since there will be more navigation satellites in the sky. Already, receivers can tie GLONASS and GPS together; it's only a matter of time before Beidou is integrated as well.

[1] http://www.economist.com/node/18304246

jlgreco• 14 years ago

> As an aside, how does the US government make money from the GPS?

Do they? What would the royalties be for, licensed chip design?

modeless• 14 years ago

The US government does not make money from GPS. It was built by and for the military, with civilian use as an afterthought. Once civilian use took off, though, the government decided to basically give it as a gift to the rest of the world. http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2000/05/36021

The military retains control (which is why other nations are still working on their own systems), but this really was a remarkable act of generosity by the US government.

CountSessine2• 14 years ago

The beautiful thing is that with 4 more or less independent global navigation satellite systems in play (GPS, Galileo, Compass/Beidou, and GLONASS), there will be more than 70+ satellites in orbit providing ultra-reliable, ultra-accurate navigation and positioning and you won't necessarily have to trust any one of those networks individually.

dfc2• 14 years ago

Do you have a receiver that works with all four systems?

vivaforever• 14 years ago

This is just another example of ignorant westerners demonize China. 1km wrong? are you fucking serious? I use GPS everyday and didn't find any problem. You're just kind of idiots who think anything related to China must be evil, without any reason, and think the Chinese government has nothing better to do but vandalizing anything.

peteretep• 14 years ago

This would make rather more sense if you replied to the comment you were commenting on...

seanmcdirmid4• 14 years ago

Wumao dang (50 cent party) invading hackernews?

jtl095• 14 years ago

Traitors visited here too. lol

kalleboo6• 14 years ago

It's true, and at least it was still in effect last time I was in Beijing. Google Maps even disable their map+satellite view overlay above a certain zoom level to mask this (only in China - cross the border to free Hong Kong and it works), but you can still see it if you turn on Traffic view.

Domestic GPS devices have a reverse transform to mask the effect, but the result is you can never be sure exactly where you are. Seems like Baidu maps have fixed their map+satellite overlay now, but when I visited, they had the same problem.

http://home.wangjianshuo.com/archives/20081109_all_maps_in_c...

jtl095• 14 years ago

why are you interested the sensitive region of other country? why area 51 is blocked from GPS? why can't countries outside U.S check how many Massacre weapons in this country? why this domestic country arise the most the wars in last 60 years?

kqr2• 14 years ago

For information on the various satellite navigation systems available:

  GPS (United States)
  GLONASS (Russia)
  Galileo (European Union)
  Compass/ Beidou (China)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_navigation

gonehome2• 14 years ago

There are some bizarre comments in this thread. Does China have PR people that are paid to just comment on random news articles about them with praises in broken english?

joshAg4• 14 years ago

Almost certainly. Companies can afford to do exactly this on sites like reddit and amazon. The US military has admitted to having a program to do exactly this.

Part of the reason is because posting comments on certain web pages is not a highly sophisticated task, so wages can be low for the commenters.

ihsw3• 14 years ago

It was:

* in 2011

* contracted out to a corporation called Ntrepid, see more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ntrepid

* worth $2.76M

* targeted non-US websites to counter-act extremist propaganda

That is hardly representative of the US military rather than pet project, let's stop the fear mongering.

jtl095• 14 years ago

Try to let ppl feel inferior of the their secondary language is a not bad idea. but it is just somehow off the topic. it has nothing related to the topic here and makes your arguments bland. Second, it disappointed you again that nobody here was paid by any company. it is just because they pity you to show you waht is right ,which is like your teachers told you in your kindergarten age. Last, enjoy your foolish.

lemma• 14 years ago

Well, this is entertaining.

nodata• 14 years ago

wtf is going on with the other replies to the op's comment?

mikeash2• 14 years ago

You're not kidding. Although I don't doubt there are propaganda teams on many sides that patrol the internet, I have a hard time imagining that these come from one, except possibly as part of a weird bluff. They're so bad that there's no way they'd actually cause positive feelings toward China. My bet is that some small group of regular Chinese internet users found this comment thread and are going to town. Their language is much like any typical jigoistic crap you'll find scattered all over the internet from many different countries.

seanmcdirmid4• 14 years ago

Are you familiar with the wu mao dang (五毛党 or 50 cent party)?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_Mao_Dang

Anyways, just one of the strange things about living in China, but they are mostly harmless and uninfluential on English boards (now on Chinese boards...).

gonehome2• 14 years ago

Weird I had no idea about that.

How are they worse on the Chinese boards?

China's Beidou GPS-substitute opens to public in Asia

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