location based services from Vladimir with love ?!? Putin hopes GLONASS satellite system will outperform GPS 12.03.2007, 15.13

MOSCOW, March 12 (Itar-Tass) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the satellite system GLONASS, which is in making at present, was bound to prove competitive if it performed well. “In order users chose GLONASS, the system should operate flawlessly, better than GPS (the global positioning system). Cheaper and with a better quality,” he said at a meeting with government members on Monday. “I hope that the government will pay much attention to the creation of the GLONASS system,” the president said. He added that he watched the progress of the project. “We have the right to count on known, healthy economic patriotism of our users, first of all of the state, but I proceed from the assumption that we shall work on market terms in this sector of the economy, and users will be able to chose a quality service,” Putin stressed. A project of using the global navigation satellite system GLONASS is to be finalised by the end of March for needs of the state and mass users, Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said at a meeting on commercial uses of GLONASS on Monday. “The participants in the meeting understand that it is too little to create and deploy the orbital and ground components of the system. It is not less and maybe even more important to secure its integration with programs and plans of speedy economic and innovation development of the country,” Ivanov said. He added that it was necessary to “make possibilities of the system maximally close to a mass user”. The Russian president has set the task of deploying GLONASS nationwide by the end of 2007 and ensuring its effective use “not only for state needs, but for the mass user,” Ivanov said. “We are to consider today how to make it so that that its user is not only the state in an abstract understanding, but also the mass user in the sphere of ensuring security, the life activity, transport monitoring and construction,” he said. He stressed that the task was to “determine actions of the state and private business in order to ensure the use of GLONASS on the principles of state-private partnership”. A provisional authority comprising the Federal Space Agency, Information and Communications Ministry, the company AFK Sistema, as well as representatives of federal executive bodies was set up in last year’s December. Ivanov said that the authority was to make its proposals for the implementation of the GLONASS project.