Keynote Address to the Royal Institute of Navigation
NAV 01 Conference, November 7, 2001
The first satellite in the Global Positioning System went into orbit in February of 1978. If all goes according to plan, the first Galileo satellite could launch in 2004.
The political and technological landscape of 1978 is obviously a far cry from the world of 2004. For that matter, for many of us in the West, the psychological and emotional mindscape of today is far different from that of two months ago -- before airliners became weapons of mass destruction..
The events since September 11 may indicate, among other things, that GPS-guided bombs and missiles won't be enough to locate, identify, and eradicate the agents of terrorism. But these same events do suggest that a Galileo system is needed to provide robustness against terrorist threats to the world's critical infrastructures, particularly in transport and communications..
Consider the world that gave birth to, and into which the Global Positioning System was born: .
It was a world virtually without human AIDS or human anthrax..
A world of mainframe computers.
With missions to the moon.
A world with all the Beatles alive and well.
A world with Nelson Mandela in prison.
A world with iron and bamboo curtains.
A world where you waited in line to use a telephone.
A world transfixed by war in a remote, underdeveloped Asian nation.
Galileo's world, when it comes about, will be:
A world virtually without smallpox or polio.
With missions to Mars, the asteroid belt, the outer planets, and beyond our solar system.
A world where we carry computers around in our pockets.
A world without apartheid.
A world without the Soviet Union or the Berlin Wall.
A world where mobile phones are ubiquitous.
A world transfixed by war in a remote, underdeveloped Asian nation.
Well, the more things change . . .
Modernized GNSS
Indeed, when we contemplate GPS and Galileo, we are in different worlds on two sides of time, separated by the great divide of the past quarter century. And there's a world of difference between them, as a result. But going forward, they will populate a common world and -- though separate and more or less equal -- GPS and Galileo will comprise a common, modernized Global Navigation Satellite System or GNSS.
Indeed, the world of difference in GNSS systems is less that between GPS and Galileo, than between a GNSS world with Galileo and one without it.
The particular worlds to which I speak today are threefold:
Politics & programmes
Technology, products, and services
Business & applications
The GNSS world of the future -- even if only populated by a modernized Global Positioning System -- will offer greater accuracy, greater availability, greater robustness. But a GNSS world with Galileo in it would make these things happen faster and with greater scope and depth -- in quantitative terms, at least twice as much.
In addition to expediting implementation of greater common functionality -- that is, getting more of the same faster -- Galileo would offer distinctive features that will build out markets larger than could GPS alone. According to a cost/benefit analysis completed for the EC a year ago, more than half of the estimated 8 billion euros in annual European benefits from new and complementary GNSS services in the year 2020 would come from the added capabilities of Galileo.
The European Commission has clearly created a more arduous task for itself by pursuing the path of a public-private partnership, or PPP, which seeks to recover -- from the Galileo infrastructure itself -- a large element of the development and operating costs.
Now, I personally agree with those who argue that the benefits to European sovereignty and general economic advancement are reason enough for Europe's public institutions to shoulder full responsibility for building Galileo. I say this not based on any profound insight into European politics, but on my conversations with U.S. proponents of a GNSS world with only GPS in it. I ask them, if the situation were reversed and the United States had to rely on a GNSS operated by our friends and allies in Europe, would you think that was a acceptable thing for the U.S. to do? So far, this notion has been unanimously rejected.
But, in any case, the PPP approach appears to reflect the extant political realities in the EU, is probably feasible, and may produce political and economic equities that would not be achievable by other means.
Honesty and Monopoly
Galileo would also keep the United States honest in its management of GPS. Not that I think the U.S. government has been noticeably dishonest or narrowly manipulative in this matter. Quite the contrary -- the United States has been remarkably open-handed in ensuring access to GPS by users around the world. But unilateral control, like unilateral policy-making, of such a potent global utility is an invitation to unresponsiveness and even abuse by the system operator.
Monopolies also tend to pose threats to technological innovation and economic progress. We see this in the natural realm where monocultures are invitations to disaster, and diversity is a mainstay of biological resilience. Blight and the Irish potato economy should have taught us this, but the monocultures of biogenetic grains and McDonald's restaurants tell me that we haven't completely learned that lesson yet.
Now, I have many reservations about the way privatization of telecommunications and energy monopolies has taken place in recent years. Nonetheless, the breakup of the Bell Telephone System in the United States and state-operated telecom entities elsewhere have undeniably generated creativity and diversity in product and service offerings. Can we imagine the wholesale move to wireless communications having taken place with the same speed and vitality under the old regime? Can we imagine having the range of associated portable devices and mobile services becoming available so quickly?
In matters of GNSS monoculture, the official resistance to Galileo that we continue to hear from some sectors of the U.S. government reinforces my sense of anxiety. The unilateral world of what is effectively a GPS monopoly can never be as rich in services and as robust in operation as a multisystem world of GNSS.
Diversity and Commonality
With a short-message communications function, service guarantees, search & rescue, and other features, the service offerings of Galileo appear to be more diverse than those of GPS -- at least those services available to civil and commercial users.
At least as important as Galileo-specific services are the expanded signal-in-space resource and independent infrastructure that Galileo would bring to GNSS. Galileo would introduce a healthy redundancy -- separate, but compatible -- into a truly Global Navigation Satellite System.
Having highlighted these different worlds, however, we should also underline their commonality and their common interests. From satellite constellation to frequency selection to financing methodology to security concerns, the worlds of GPS and Galileo appear to be drawing nearer one another. But we need to ensure that, while they may converge, these two systems do not collide.
The benefits described earlier will be substantially reduced if GNSS systems are not complementary and interoperable. GPS and Galileo need to find common ground for their approach to such matters as spectrum allocation, frequency plan and signal structure, user fees, carriage requirements, and security measures and operational policies in time of conflict.
To this end, the efforts of the Galileo Signal Task Force in particular, and of the Galileo programme in general, have made an enormous contribution toward technical interoperability. The task force's baseline scenario appears to put the right kinds of signals on the right frequencies to maximize complementary, even synergistic use of the combined systems.
For their part, however, the Americans haven't held up their end of this conversation on interoperability. But then, it wasn't a conversation they particularly wanted to have in the first place. Oh, sure, the United States is happy enough talking about how Europe or Japan can help make GPS better through augmentations systems such as EGNOS or MSAS. But they fear that talking seriously about Galileo would only encourage others, including Europeans, to take Galileo itself more seriously.
It was the same with Glonass. The 1978 bilateral transportation agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union included a provision for discussions on satellite navigation systems. But substantive talks on the subject didn't really happen until the mid-1990s when a sizable number of Glonass satellites were in orbit. And the decline in the conversation directly paralleled the decline in the Glonass constellation. So, I don't expect that we will see a serious U.S. engagement on interoperability until the EU and ESA have committed -- unambiguously, once and for all -- enough resources to develop and implement Galileo.
Products and Services
Let's turn now, briefly, to the various GNSS technologies and the products and services that flow from them.
Some of the good news for Galileo vendors entering the marketplace is that so much is known today about satellite navigation technologies, operations, and markets. Reducing the unknowns and uncertainties reduces corresponding risks. Some of the bad news for Galileo, of course, is that so much more is known about these things because of GPS.
GPS-based products and services have been available for well over a decade. GPS has practically defined accessible, accurate positioning and timing in the same way that Xerox once defined photocopying or Rolls Royce defined luxury automobiles.
In the business world, timing and positioning are as important as in the technological world of GNSS. But it's a different kind of positioning and timing. For example, consider the positioning strategy of the two leading GNSS programmes. Although GPS has always been discussed as a dual-use system for civil AND defense communities, its program development and initial marketing on behalf of national security positioned GPS as primarily a military system. The continuing use of GPS satellites for detection of nuclear detonations and other "special" capabilities and its operational control by the Department of Defense have made it hard to reposition GPS, even in a post-Cold War world. The current GPS positioning strategy, I'd say, is one of asserting market leadership and primacy, in effect, covering the available trade space: GPS as a national asset, but a global utility.
Galileo's sponsors, on the other hand, have sought to position the system as a civil one with European sovereignty and value-added features, such as service guarantees and certification. But security issues associated with such a powerful utility as GNSS have drawn intelligence and defense agencies into the dialog and planning around Galileo, creating an element of convergence with the positioning of GPS.
Git Thar Fustest
As for timing of entry into the marketplace, we might recall the very vernacular advice of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest during the American Civil War. Victory belongs, Forrest said, to he who "gits thar fustest with the mostest."
I know that GPS World's entry into the marketplace late in 1989, when only 11 GPS satellites were in orbit, has had a lot to do with our success. Obviously, by launching Galileo's World magazine in 1989, we hoped to repeat that strategy.
But in a field essentially based on electronics, information processing, and communications technologies, venerability is not necessarily a permanent competitive advantage. Being first to this market is not the only factor for ultimate success. Customers for advanced-technology products and services are always looking for -- and expecting to get -- the next best thing. Moreover, we have a lot of recent examples from the Internet dot.com implosion that suggest getting there first isn't nearly enough to be successful in the new economy.
The Galileo community could actually garner several advantages by coming to the game late. It gets to start with a clean slate. It gets to use the latest advances in electronics manufacturing. It has been able to see the capabilities and limitations of existing systems. It comes about when the European community has an advanced level of coordination of policies and transEuropean programs. Could the EEC of 1972 have even conceived of implementing a program such as Galileo?
Then there is the question of modernization. Many companies in many industries have faced the problem of supporting customers who have so-called legacy systems. How does one get these customers onto an upgrade path that's affordable and in which they will have confidence? GPS manufacturers face that issue now.
Which brings to mind the question:
How did God manage to make the world in only six days? Answer: He didn't have to worry about an installed base.
Compatibility and Interoperability
Backward compatibility has been a major issue in GPS modernization plans at both the system and product levels. Compatibility issues take a different form with Galileo. For one thing, Galileo doesn't have to worry about backward compatibility with itself. And, in relation to the existing GNSS, it's as much about forward compatibility -- the GPS of the future -- as it is about backward compatibility.
Lyn Dutton and Alison Turner, from Thales Avionics, have written a very insightful article about compatibility and interoperability in GNSS systems for the autumn issue of Galileo's World. This article takes that discussion to the next level.
In fact, when we look at the augmented GNSS markets projected for a world with both GPS andGalileo, it's clear to me that compatibility plays to Europe's strength, while it is, if not a weakness, at least a troublesome issue for GPS.
If the Galileo program adheres to its proposed implementation schedule, its signal-in-space will become available at essentially same time as the new civil GPS signals on the L2 and L5 frequencies -- during the 2004-2005 timeframe. More significantly, if GalileoSat launches proceed as planned, a fully deployed Galileo service will be on the air years ahead of GPS L2 and L5: Thirty Galileo satellites by the end of 2007 versus 18 GPS satellites with civil L2 and only 7 with L5.
Despite its apparent late start, Galileo also appears on track to enter the field at a propitious point in the evolution of GNSS products, services, and standards. Early GPS products tended to be single-function and proprietary with a limited set of features. Since then, the technology community has moved a long ways toward open architectures, multitechnology platforms, common interfaces and protocols, and OEM form factors that encourage integration.
Lessons Learned
Today, mapping software, georeferenced databases, wireless communications, inertial and dead-reckoning technologies, and a large variety of other sensors are routinely being linked with GPS. These integrated products often share functionality in such components as CPU, antenna, and power management systems.
Galileo can reap the benefit of the expensive lessons learned about user interfaces, product design, and features paid for by GPS pioneers over the past 15 years. There is also a sizeable body of research and expertise regarding the human motivations that compel or constrain prospective customers in adopting these products and services.
European leadership in setting standards for advanced technologies will expedite the adoption and integration of GNSS into portable wireless communications and mobile computing platforms. This is reflected in such efforts as the Location Interoperability Forum (LIF) formed jointly by Nokia and Ericsson, along with U.S.-based Motorola. LIF seeks to establish "common and ubiquitous solutions for Mobile Location Services." Related standards-setting activities are under way through the European Telecommunications Standards Institute and other regional organizations.
By building Galileo, Europe will set a new standard in Global Navigation Satellite Systems. I'm as certain about that as I am with anything in the GNSS world. After 2008, and probably for several years before then, very few vendors, if any, will build GPS-only equipment. Technological advances in materials, manufacturing, and digital signal processing have made the marginal cost of adding fundamentally compatible GNSS signals to a product trivial when compared to the benefits.
GNSS-enhanced products and services can create powerful value propositions. But we have to avoid the situation of technology pushing a wet noodle of consumer demand uphill. We know that GNSS technology makes for a compelling story. But it needs to be communicated to the non-specialist public in the form of benefits, not features; to be presented as applications, not hardware and software.
I know that this is probably the last group I should be saying this to, but most people don't really know much or care much about navigation. For example, I'll bet that 99 percent of motorists in this or any other country don't think they are navigating when they travel from home to work or the store or the football match. If they think about what they are doing at all -- and many motorists give the impression that they don't -- they think that they are driving a car. So anything that makes that task easier, more pleasant, more certain, and so forth, is good. And anything that doesn't speak to those values doesn't matter for most users of GNSS.
Outside of very specialized audiences, navigation technology doesn't sell. And, unlike the early years of GPS, that's the world that Galileo will be selling into.
The Importance of Location
Over the years, I've begun talking less about positioning -- except to specialized and informed audiences such as yourselves and, I hope, readers of our magazines. Instead, when it comes to applications, I talk more about location. That's something that people can sink their teeth into, and wrap their minds around. Probably the leading growth market for GNSS is what we might call location-based services or LBS. Now, these activities also travel under the guise of wireless location, mobile location services, and many other names, including a distinctly European construct, infomobility.
LBS is virtually untapped as a market, indeed, it's not even fully defined. In the United States, a springboard for these initiatives is being created by E911 services, the regulatory mandate for an automatic capability to locate emergency callers who are using mobile phones.
At the technology level, LBS typically incorporates real-time user location, on-line databases with real-time information, graphical user interfaces, and wireless communications, including mobile Internet capability. Because of that last feature -- use of the Internet -- LBS shared some of the pain experienced by many dot.com enterprises.
But the confused business environment surrounding Web-based services is not a fatal condition. In fact, it could prove to be a blessing in disguise. That's because, as would-be service providers rethink their business models and value propositions, product designers and systems integrators are continuing to refine the LBS technology platforms -- trying to make them cheaper and friendlier to users.
By doubling the available signals in space, Galileo will make LBS applications more reliable. And Galileo will become available about the same time as these improved LBS business models and mass-market user equipment. Indeed, a decision to implement Galileo in the near future will probably guarantee its incorporation into the planning for LBS products and services.
September 11 has added a whole new dimension to safety and security issues of location. I believe it has ratcheted up the sense of urgency that people have about knowing where others are, and letting others know where they are. Certainly this has given new urgency to the E911 initiative, and probably for the European counterpart, E112, as well. Similarly, Galileo's Search and Rescue service might well strike a wider resonance in a world that's feeling a little less secure about itself.
Let me close my remarks with a couple of thoughts about our path toward a universal GNSS philosophy.
Human beings sometimes seem to have a predilection toward Manicheism -- the cosmology that casts existence in dualistic terms -- the struggle between good and evil, between light and dark, between spiritual and material worlds.
Perhaps this tendency stems from the bilateral symmetry of human anatomy -- left side juxtaposed against right side -- which, of course, is not truly symmetrical. Because underneath the outward appearance of hemispheric opposites, the human organism has only one heart, one mind, one spirit. Even Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde were, after all, the same person. So, maybe it's not just manic-depressives who are subject to bipolar disorders. Maybe thinking this way is just a function -- or dysfunction -- of the human condition.
But in matters of Global Navigation Satellite Systems, at least, I hope we avoid the manichean dualities -- GPS good, Galileo bad, or their opposites.
Yesterday's GNSS world was one of national systems, GPS and Glonass. With Galileo in it, tomorrow's world would be a truly global one, and I think most of us would flourish in it.
Thank you.
