Galileo Navigation System Gets Go-Ahead From EU Parliament

An anonymous reader writes "Plans to start up the EU's first global satellite navigation system (GNSS) built under civilian control, entirely independent of other navigation systems and yet interoperable with them, were approved by MEPs on Wednesday. Both parts of this global system — Galileo and EGNOS — will offer citizens a European alternative to America's GPS or Russia's Glonass signals. The Galileo system could be used in areas such as road safety, fee collection, traffic and parking management, fleet management, emergency call, goods tracking and tracing, online booking, safety of shipping, digital tachographs, animal transport, agricultural planning and environmental protection to drive growth and make citizens' lives easier."

Comments

To what end?

[Karmashock]

The primary downside the US GPS system is that it limits high precision navigation to military purposes. For anything not needing to be super precise, GPS works just fine.

And even then, you can get the ultra precise lock if you really want it.

Why would the Europeans need anything else? They get everything the americans get out of it. Including military targeting.

Look, build whatever you want. It just seems like in this case the euros are just saying "me too" and building something because someone else built it never mind that its redundant.