New navigation satellites will be launched in bid to take on GPS

MOSCOW - THE days of the Cold War may have passed, but Russia and the US are in the midst of another battle - this one a technological fight over the US monopoly on satellite navigation.

Taking on the well-known Global Positioning System (GPS) of the United States, officials in Moscow have said that the Russian space agency plans to launch eight navigation satellites by the end of this year.

The move would nearly complete Russia's own system, called Glonass, for Global Navigation Satellite System.

It would be expected to begin operating over Russian territory and parts of Europe and Asia, and then go global in 2009 to compete with the Global Positioning System of the United States.

And Russia is not the only country trying to break the US monopoly on navigation technology, though its system, funded by government oil revenue, is the furthest along.

China has already sent up satellites to create its own system, called Baidu after the Chinese word for the Big Dipper.

The European Union has also started developing a rival system, Galileo, although work has been halted because of doubts among private contractors over its potential for profit.

What is driving the technological battle is, in part, the potential for many more uses for satellite navigation than the one most people know it for - giving driving instructions to travellers.

Businesses as disparate as agriculture and banking are integrating the technology into their operations.

Satellite navigation may provide the platform for services like site-specific advertising, with directions that appear on cellphone screens when a user is walking, for example, near a Starbucks coffeehouse or a McDonald's restaurant.

Sales of GPS devices are already booming.

The global market for the devices reached US$15 billion (S$23 billion) last year, according to the GPS Industry Council, a Washington trade group, and is expanding at a rate of 25 per cent to 30 per cent annually.

But what is also behind the battle for control of navigation technology is a fear that the United States could use its monopoly - the system was developed and is controlled by the US military - to switch off signals in a time of crisis.

'In a few years, business without a navigation signal will become inconceivable,' said Mr Andrei Ionin, an aerospace analyst with the Centre for the Analysis of Strategies and Technologies in Moscow.

When that happens, countries that choose to rely only on GPS, Mr Ionin said, will be falling into 'a geopolitical trap' of US dominance of an important Internet-age infrastructure.

The United States formally opened GPS to civilian users in 1993 by promising to provide it continually, at no cost, around the world.

The Russian project, of course, carries wide implications for armies around the world by providing a navigation system not controlled by the Pentagon, complementing an increasingly assertive foreign policy stance from Moscow.

The Russian system is also calculated to send ripples through the fast-expanding industry for consumer navigation devices by promising a slight technical advantage over GPS alone, analysts and industry executives say.

Devices receiving signals from both systems would presumably be more reliable.

President Vladimir Putin of Russia, who speaks often about Glonass and its possibilities, has prodded his scientists to make the product consumer friendly.

INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE