GPS Network Services For Supporting Surveying Tasks.
Can the cost associated with permanent GPS networks be recovered?
The majorities of permanent GPS networks have been, and will continue to be, for some time to come, initiatives primarily from government agencies.
These government entities have been able to justify the costs of implementing GPS networks by citing the approach of "preventable costs"; similar to the strategy used to finance the establishment of classical geodetic networks decades earlier. The return on the original investment is not measured in nominal terms of hard revenue but in keeping the costs borne by the industry lower than the alternative. This approach also encourages network standardization and avoids the appearance of a patchwork of private, customized networks for project-specific purposes.
The net result of these “free”, but limited, services has been to give the user the impression that the distribution of differential GPS corrections should remain free of charge, and that the cost of establishing and maintaining the networks, and providing services should be assumed by the network owners.
This statement is supported by the marked decrease in the number of paying users for the GPS correction services provided by companies such as DCI, and even Omnistar just a few years ago. They have since struggled to remain competitive in the face of the U.S. presidential decision to turn off Selective Availability on the GPS signal, and broadcast free signals.
Even today, agencies marketing and selling GPS RTK network corrections are facing an uphill battle in trying to convince potential users to subscribe to their GPS corrections services. The primary reason is the disproportionate cost (needed basically for re-covering the huge communication fixed costs) for the offered services with regard to the value service and the limited number of paying customers available. Unfortunately public services are not by nature concerned by the cost recovering, they are just providing the utility.
It may be useful to compare the present situation with that of cellular phone service providers several years ago. There is no denying that these companies are now seeing healthy profits from the various levels of wireless service they offer today. However, when the products were first introduced to the public, the companies gambled on the presupposed reliability and variety of services to lure the customers, and offset an often complex and costly infrastructure. Evidence that their investments paid off can be found in the steady increase in the number of users over the years and the attraction for new service offerings being rolled out on a regular basis. These services are indeed new applications that users have been willing to pay for.
A new generation of support services
A new generation of services based on GPS networks is probably the solution to definitively support the setup of those infrastructures.
It is necessary to address much more specifically the basic requests of the GPS network providers and to recognized the value services the users want to benefit and to support.
Decision-makers wish to control the quality of services based on the type of products their networks provide and want to identify their users even in real time to monitor usage and charge users for services.
They are also committed to providing GPS network solutions in the appropriate reference system. Coordinate transformations should not been seen purely as side products: the very purpose of permanent GPS networks is to offer a complete integrated datum-consistent solution.
We must add also that the software applications used to manage permanent GPS networks could, and even should, incorporate functions to monitor usage and/or charge users for services.
The subject of increased “data integrity” is also creating considerable interest among GPS network owners. What if they could provide a service that bypassed the problems that users routinely encounter in processing their own data?