A South American competitor to GPS

The United States maintains the Global Positioning System (GPS) of 32 satellites for anyone to use. How nice of us.

Still, some countries either don't trust the US or want their own systems for a variety of national and technical reasons. Russia has a system (GLONASS) that provides and alternative. China and Europe are launching their own systems as well, though they remain several years away.

Is there a reason for South America to launch its own system as well? It could be useful to have another alternative and one under the region's control. It would be a huge boost for R&D spending as well as science and engineering expertise in the region. At the same time, it could be seen as a big waste of time and money when there are other freely available platforms.

Brazil and others are discussing a South American space agency run through UNASUR. Brazil is also planning to launch new earth monitoring satellites, a priority that ranks much higher for the region than an alternative GPS system. Several countries have partnered with China to launch satellites in recent years, mostly for telecommunications.

This isn't something for the near future, but there is no reason to think the region couldn't be running its own limited constellation of satellites for global positioning at some point inside of fifty years.

Or, alternatively and perhaps more realistically, Latin America could partner with the US, China or someone else to own and operate a piece of the system. They could share the costs and the benefits.