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Study finds that a GPS outage would cost $1 billion per day:
Since becoming fully operational in 1995, Global Positioning System technology has become widely adopted in the United States and abroad. The concept of satellite-based navigation has become so essential that other world powers, including China, Russia, the European Union, India, and Japan, have all started building their own regional or global systems.
Now, one of the most comprehensive studies on the subject has assessed the value of this GPS technology to the US economy and examined what effect a 30-day outage would have—whether it's due to a severe space weather event or "nefarious activity by a bad actor." The study was sponsored by the US government's National Institutes of Standards and Technology and performed by a North Carolina-based research organization named RTI International.
[...] In the case of some adverse event leading to a widespread outage, the study estimates that the loss of GPS service would have a $1 billion per-day impact, although the authors acknowledge this is at best a rough estimate. It would likely be higher during the planting season of April and May, when farmers are highly reliant on GPS technology for information about their fields.
[...] "GPS came along at a time of significant evolution in the telecom sector and played a critical role in the digitization of telecom infrastructure and the advent of wireless technology," the study states. "Wireless technology continues to evolve in ways that increase its reliance on highly precise timing, which in turn increases reliance on GPS. Multiple technological trends—from autonomous cars to the internet of things—will be stretching wireless technology to new limits in the coming years."
The study is likely to increase public calls for improved safety and security of the US GPS system, which the Air Force continues to modernize with its new fleet of GPS III satellites. The first of these new satellites, offering positioning and timing information with three times better accuracy and heightened anti-jamming capabilities, launched on a Falcon 9 rocket in December.
That's about $275,000 per minute or $11,500 per second.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 17 2019, @01:20PM (5 children)
We have Glonass, with much better coverage to all the planet than GPS, (works above and below polar circles, for one example), so with any decent device, a complete GPS down outage would be hardly noticed.
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Monday June 17 2019, @01:22PM (1 child)
https://www.gsa.europa.eu/newsroom/news/test-your-android-device-s-satellite-navigation-performance [europa.eu]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Monday June 17 2019, @07:16PM
Thanks, app is much appreciated. Looks like my Moto X4 is Glonass and GPS only. I remeber that GLONASS increased in popularity because Russia added a tax for any new device with GPS but not GLONASS; I wonder if Galileo or BeiDou will have similar levels of adoption.
I wonder if Glonass could provide redundancy to the GPS network completely; clocks probably would require the precision associated with only one network.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 17 2019, @01:23PM
Any Huawei device on European market supports Glonass...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 17 2019, @02:33PM
But that would mean accepting factual information from Rrrussia, and the MSM is saying I should be outraged about that.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 17 2019, @06:37PM
All GPS satellites transmit on the same frequency, unlike GLONASS and others.
Different frequencies propagate differently through the atmosphere (velocity, adsorption, refraction, reflection, etc.).
An error of 1 billionth of a second is about ±3.33 meters of error.