The Galileo Joint Undertaking (GJU) organisation has again postponed its selection of a consortium to operate Europe's global navigation satellite system – this time until the end of June.
The selection was originally to have taken place at the beginning of March this year. GJU said then that the proposals from the two bidders, iNavSat and Eurely, demanded further negotiation.
But consortia sources claimed that political and industrial pressure led to the delay (Flight International, 8-14 March). The GJU insists the postponement does not affect the timetable for deploying Galileo.
"We will announce a final bidder by the end of June. Although it is unlikely, if final negotiations with the selected bidder failed, we would switch to the other."
The GJU estimates the total cost to the public-private partnership of developing and deploying Galileo to be €3.4 billion ($4.4 billion), with a predicted 1.7 billion users by 2010.
ROB COPPINGER/LONDON
Source: Flight International
