Has the time to commercialize satellite navigation signals come?

While mobile location based service providers today still depend on the US military controlled GPS system, the European Union is looking to reduce this dependency by launching its own global navigation satellite system, Galileo, which will be fully operational around 2020. Besides the free-of-charge basic signal, a Commercial Service (CS) will be offered at a premium-rate to service providers to provide higher positioning accuracy, signal authentication and service guarantee. However, it is still highly uncertain whether location-based service providers are willing to pay for accessing CS signals. Motivated by the lack of research in this area, this paper analyzes the viability of CS by conducting various interviews with key stakeholders, complemented by desk research. The results indicate that the willingness to adopt CS platform is questionable. It depends greatly on the type of applications of interest, as well as on the existing and future alternative solutions.