Galileo, the European Union's satellite radio-navigation system, has reached the one billion mobile phone users worldwide, the European Commission announced on Monday 9 September, on the eve of the 15th anniversary of the European GNSS Agency (GSA).
The Commissioner for the Internal Market and Industry, Elżbieta Bieńkowska, praised the “truly European efforts to set up the most accurate radio-navigation system in the world”.
Currently, 95% of companies producing mobile phone chips for satellite radio-navigation produce Galileo-compatible chips. This threshold of one billion users is calculated on the basis of sales of smartphones using Galileo worldwide.
However, according to the Commission, the number of Galileo users is actually “much larger”. In Europe, all new car models with marketing authorisation are equipped with the eCall system, which uses Galileo to communicate the location of the vehicle to emergency services (see EUROPE 11992/23). Since this year, Galileo has been integrated into digital truck tachographs, which record speed and distance to ensure compliance with driving time rules and thus improve road safety. Galileo also offers a search and rescue (SAR) service that reduces the time required to detect a person equipped with a distress beacon to less than 10 minutes.
Finally, Galileo offers a fully encrypted service that allows public authorities to guarantee the continuity of services in the event of national emergency or crisis situations, such as terrorist attacks.
In July, the satellite radio-navigation system suffered a major failure for 5 days (see EUROPE 12302/10). The results of an independent investigation to shed light on the circumstances of this blackout are expected in the fall. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)