Abstract
Abstract
The article will first review how and why banal use of global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) has spread so fast, briefly describing the main sectors of the market, basically shared between location-based services and road transportation, and massively dominated by smartphones and car devices. It will then analyze if the characteristics of a world public good defined as a nonrivalrous, nonexcludable, and universal resource, good, or service, the exploitation or the preservation of which can justify a collective international action, are applicable to GNSS open signals. Looking at the GNSS primary resource production, no particular international action is taken today and will likely continue that way until 2020 when only three countries and the EU will generate free GNSS signals destined for a global coverage, each of them preserving full control of its own resource. The dual use of the national constellations, managed by their respective ministry of defense, does not favor right away a collective international action. Yet, an approach to a common governance would definitely make sense. The preservation of this resource benefits today of two ongoing international new collective actions, namely, via (1) The World Radio Communication Conference held under the purview of International Telecommunications Union, a specialized UN Agency, assigning, preserving, and protecting the signal frequencies of an increasing scare resource; and (2) The International Committee on GNSS, a platform created in the wake of UNISPACE III, where GNSS providers are building the required consensus to ensure compatibility among the different constellations and their interoperability. This platform is also used for exchanging views on signal availability, integrity, and interference issues, crucial for the quality of the resource. An analysis of the signals characteristics and their uses will indicate if the question is indeed worth asking.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.