msmobiles.com - Cellular News - Soon compulsory in EU: all cars equipped with GPS and SMS sending capibility upon car crash

Soon compulsory in EU: all cars equipped with GPS and SMS sending capibility upon car crash
May 14, 2004;
Citizens of EU (= European Union) complain about EU-cracy (bureaucracy within EU organizations), but sometimes EU can be good for something...

Since next year cars to be sold in EU will have to be equipped with sensors, that will be measuring scope of the car accident, GPS that will measure location of the car and SMS sender that will send SMS with information about location and extent of the damage.

Some people claim that it was bad for EU to impose one and only one cellular standard upon whole area of EU - the GSM - but some other argue that it gave edge to EU located companies (like Nokia, Siemens and Ericsson) to export more outside of EU. In USA end users however have a choice and can select either GSM or CDMA, but in EU there is no choice: it is GSM or GSM (or lately UMTS/3G). So while the issue of GSM may be contentious the fact is that some initiatives of EU are good. This "SMS with GPS-obtained locaton upon car crash" is an example of good one...

Please note: EU is building its own system called "Gallileo" that will fully replace GPS. GPS is owned and operated by USA and sometimes, during military operating of USA, army of USA is jamming partially GPS signal and it becomes unavailable. Gallileo on the other hand is designed for civilian purposes only.

Back to other news index