How is GPS service offered to civilians at no cost?

How is it that civilians are offered GPS service at no cost? I understand that it is being provided by the government. Is it paid for by tax money which would allow the general public to have access to GPS service? Will it ever be privatized such that companies will start charging consumers to have access to GPS signals?|||there are old and outdated sattalites that give a radio signal to broadcast thier location. Since it is a one way radio transmission, and does not recieve like new TV sattallites, they cannot moniter who picks up on the signals.





All a GPS is a radio reciever with a Trigonometry calcualtor to Tri-angulate the sattallite positions and relate it to your global position hence the name Global Positioning system.





They are sending up newer more advanced GPS sattallites, maybe then there may be service charges as with everything else., and may even turn the old ones off if they really feel greedy|||Its just like the internet. It was developed for the military for supper accurate mapping and later was moved into the private sector for other types of mapping. Any time you buy or use a product that is shipped either by truck train or by sea a very small amount of the tax you pay goes to maintaining and servicing this system. Also some of the money spent on military budgets is spent on this system as well. On a side note: the amount of accuracy of the hand held and automotive systems is only about 20% as accurate as the system is capable of. For every day use this is all anyone needs. I know the system is much, much more capable but the exact figures are a military secret. On the net there are all kinds of guesses as to what this actually is, but the realistic answer is that it's a secret.|||You can thank former President Ronald Reagan for GPS signals available to the public. He ordered gps signals to be available free for the common good. Of course politicians can at anytime decide to tax it or whatever.





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