After 17 years, numerous setbacks and three times over budget, Europe's Galileo satnav system went live on Thursday promising to outperform rivals and guarantee regional self-reliance.
Initial services, free to users worldwide, are available only on smartphones and navigation units fitted with Galileo-compatible microchips.
Some devices may need only a software update to start using the service, according to the European Commission, which funds the 10 billion euro ($11 billion) project.
Source: http://phys.org/news/2016-12-galileo-europe-satnav.html
There's a list of Galileo-enabled devices at www.useGalileo.eu. One thought that goes through this editor's mind is that wIth two sources of data, the deliberate inaccuracy in the US military system seems somewhat futile now, I wonder if that misfeature is reaching end-of-life?
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday December 17 2016, @04:06PM
Yeah, only two smartphone producers did make a Galileo-enabled phone before the system was actually switched on. Actually the first DAB-supporting smartphone appeared this year, despite DAB being broadcast since quite some time, and FM radio receivers in phones not being exactly uncommon. Compared with that, the Galileo adoption is incredibly fast.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.