Chinese threaten to dump Galileo GPS

The Chinese Beidou navigation system has been on the drawing board for ages, but when the EU wrote the business plan for the Galileo GPS system they banked on it being only used by the military and thought they could flog the system in China.

In fact, they were sure that the Chinese would buy the system because they had a cheque from Beijing for €200 million to invest in the €2.5 billion Euro scheme.

Now, according to the official news agency Xinhua, Beidou would, from 2008, begin providing an "open" level of service, with a 10-metre accuracy.

Of course the world 'open' in China might mean different things to the rest of the world, but it is believed that the service would be available free to all Chinese citizens and to other countries who sign up to it.

This could create problems for the Galileo consortium, which had hoped to recoup part of its €2.5 billion investment in Galileo by flogging receivers and commercial signal subscriptions in China.

According to New Scientist, some private companies have already been told to sign up for Beidou if they want a juicy government contract. µ

L'INQ
newscientist.com