[time-nuts] Loran in the US

[Jim Lux]

On 3/5/12 2:31 AM, Charles P. Steinmetz wrote:
> Poul-Henning wrote:
>
>> That would make roll-out a matter not for governments, but for
>> airports, harbours and other interested parties, like for instance
>> DME.
>
> Would this mean depending on private parties for precision timing and
> positioning [using that particular system, of course]? If so, I'm not
> sure that is such a good idea. Some endeavors do not lend themselves
> readily to distributed responsibility....
>

But this kind of thing already exists in some ways.  Consider that you 
hire a private party (a licensed surveyor) to establish property 
boundaries and such.  Yes, the surveyor has a legal obligation to report 
their findings to the government (to the county recorder), but I've 
noticed that this isn't always the case.

And until GPS came around, the government was happy to establish a place 
where you could go and compare your clock to an official clock, they 
didn't feel obligated to dstribute time and frequency at high accuracy. 
(Where WWV isn't "high accuracy")

There's also ARINC, which is a private consortium owned mostly by air 
line companies (I think) to provide communications and nav services to 
airliners.