Slashgeo

Directions Mag reports the state of global navigation satellite systems with a focus on India. From the article: "While many western countries are already in the saturation stage, India is still in the introductory stage. India has its own technology to launch its own satellites but it has not made an effort sufficient to create awareness about the use of GPS in day-to-day activities. [...] New satellite navigation systems - the European Union’s Galileo, Russia’s GLONASS, Japan’s Quasi-Zenith Satellite System, and China’s Twinstar - are going up. The speakers talked about the use of GNSS and of various augmentation systems in use and those which are being planned." There's also 6 India-related previous stories linked below.

the SM-GIS blog links to a Space Review article on Europe's Galileo and China's Compass. From the article: "For the Chinese, Galileo is no longer a partner, but instead more of a competitor. They extracted as much as they reasonably could have out of their relationship with the Europeans over this and now have decided to strike out on their own. [...] China was invited into Galileo partly as a way to snub the US and partly because the Europeans seem to believe that the more “international” a project is the better chance it has of not being canceled."

Slashdot discuss the Chinese Beidou geostationary GPS system to be offered free. Their summary: "The Chinese GPS system, Beidou, is apparently to be opened up for free access within China, worrying European investors on the 2.5 billion competing project, Galileo. Initially, China had declared that access to their system would be restricted to the military, and Europe had planned to recoup some of the cost of their system selling licenses to China. Michael Shaw, from the US government's National Space-based Positioning, Navigation and Timing Coordination Office in Washington DC said "Frankly, China's behavior towards Europe is not so different to how Europe behaved with us when GPS was the only game in town a decade ago."

All Points Blog tells us China has successfully launched their first Compass GNSS satellite which will compete with other GPS systems. From the short article: "The Chinese Compass Navigation Satellite System will provide positioning signals across China by 2008, and will eventually be extended worldwide. Experts said that the system is operating well and has played a significant role in cartography, telecoms, water conservation, transportation, fishery, prospecting, forest fire monitoring and national security." There's the orbit technical details in the JSR space report. See also related stories.

Here's a few recent news regarding GALILEO and GLONASS GPS systems. I copied in related stories below many items of interest regarding the two programs. Recent geoblogs entries include Vector One discussing GALILEO: "Today Christopher Booker of the Telegraph newspaper in the UK sums up the project in his column, “The costs of Galileo have already taken off so wildly (and it is already six years behind schedule), that we may well hand over much more than £1.7 billion to pay for our 17 per cent share in this white elephant (somehow two thirds of the EU’s members have managed to get out of paying anything at all).”" Google's Ed Parsons chimes in. Meanwhile, GLONASS seems in much better shape, as indicated by this other V1 entry and the news of the successful new GLONASS satellite launch.

Several geoblogs discussed the successful launch of three GLONASS satellites by Russia. Best coverage is provided by the S,M,GIS blog and the Geospatial Semantic blog. From the latter: "According to Engadget, we should expect to see the first compatible consumer device in mid-2008. By 2010, Russia will open the system up to the outside nations as well. Given the growing importance of location-based systems in the future, governments around the world are trying to create systems to either compete or complement with the widely used GPS system [...]" Slashdot also discuss GLONASS. Vector One discuss how well Russia is mapped, GLONASS or not. The new American GPS IIR-18(M) was also successfully launched on December 20th. Some previous stories copied below.