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FROM THE
EDITOR
The
Will to Position
 Over
the course of the next year, Europe will show the world what it
has to offer -- and what it can deliver -- in the realm of satellite-based
navigation, positioning, and timing. And it will have to do so in
the historical context of the United States's Global Positioning
System (GPS) that has been operating for more than 20 years.
The European initiative will be reflected most prominently in
the definition phase of the Galileo programme led by the European
Commission (EC) and the European Space Agency (ESA). During that
phase, the two groups will expend at least $80 million to establish
the organisational framework, system technical design, and economic
justification for proceeding with a full-fledged European contribution
to the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS). But Europe's GNSS
capability and capacity will also be manifested by progress on its
GNSS augmentation system the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay
Service (EGNOS), by European industry's investment in developing
GNSS-based products and services, and by the European public's willingness
to avail itself of those.
Compared to the United States and Japan, European
businesses' and consumers' embrace of GNSS has been lukewarm so
far. Drawing on two recent studies, researchers estimate a $6 billion
global market for GPS products in 1999, with less than $400 million
coming from Europe. The level of economic activity may reveal reluctance
to adopt a national military-operated system outside their governments'
control, uncertainty regarding Europe's own GNSS plans, or merely
limited interest in GNSS applications. But most researchers predict
that this will change soon, and the enticement of Galileo, which
could cost as much as $3 billion to build, would almost certainly
hasten the process.
The GNSS program has already benefited Europe by
forcing compromise and forging unity in the context of evaluating,
planning, and funding a real-world system. In comments before EGNOS
flight trials near Paris earlier this year, Jean-Eric Paquet, the
top-ranking assistant to the EC's transport director-general, observ-ed,
"EGNOS . . . has facilitated the creation of a political and technical
framework for satellite navigation and 'enabled' Euro-pean industry
to play a full role in future emerging satellite navigation and
positioning markets." With Galileo, Europe is on the threshold of
materialising a practical, far-reaching utility out of the abstraction
of GNSS. It provides a leading example of a technological program
stimulating the process of European integration, a role comparable
to that of the adoption of the euro in the economic realm.
Some sceptics have scoffed that Europe's GNSS activities
during the past five years have only proved again what the Americans
have demonstrated for 25 years -- the viability of middle earth
orbits, the efficacy of L-band frequencies and Gold code CDMA signal
structure, and the need to preserve scarce radio spectrum for navigation/positioning
services. Maybe so. But those years of serious, substantive effort
have also built a cadre of engineers and political leaders whose
knowledge of the technical and institutional issues is current,
forward-looking, and unfettered by a quarter century of business
as usual in the heretofore successful Global Positioning System.
The GNSS effort so far has also drawn together
the collective political will of 17 disparate nations (including
two non-EU members of ESA) and identified funding for more than
half of the estimated costs to implement Galileo fully by 2008.
That compares favourably to the recent failure of the U.S. government
to secure $17 million in its fiscal year 2000 budget as the first
instalment for a long-overdue modernisation of the civil GPS service.
It will be interesting to see if the European Parliament, which
gains expanded authority this year in approving EC budgets, will
show more foresight than their American counterparts.
One key decision that the European Union and ESA
will face in the coming year is whether private industry must buy
into the program development during the implementation phase, taking
on risks of sizeable investments in return for service and management
fees. Revenue-driven service opportunities may indeed appear during
the definition phase, which could attract a company or, more likely,
a consortium of companies to make a commitment to the public-private
partnership desired by the EU and ESA. But if they do not, Galileo's
political leaders should continue to pursue other options in making
the business case for the programme. The additional applications
and markets that would be created by an independent, modern European
GNSS would almost certainly generate additional taxable revenues
many times larger than the public investment required to put Galileo
in place.
If the experience with GPS is any guide, the benefits
of a full European contribution to GNSS will prove immeasurably
large, first to users and manufacturers in Europe and more generally
to the same constituencies throughout the world. By the end of 2000,
Europe should have discovered whether it has the technical and financial
resources, the business acumen, and the political will to capture
those benefits with Galileo.
Glen Gibbons
Editor
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