The bottom line is that there will be an approx 1m accuracy free-to-all service available independant of the US military. That is a worth while investment that as European, I am glad we're investing in. At any point, the US Military could start degrading the civilian user service or even removing it all together. That's just not something that can be allowed to happen if a sat nav service is to be used for critical, non military purposes.

I've not seen anything to suggest that civilian hardware will be any less or more expensive than current GPS hardware, and indeed I believe the plan is to produce products that can use both Galileo and GPS signals at the same time.

Doug