@lostsoul, I think your assessment is totally off. Indeed, although China legally "wins" any dispute due to frequency interference because it has already been faster to deploy the first satellite, it is a fact that the Europeans had announced their choice and begun work on it before China acted on it. Therefore, this is a deliberate choice on the part of the Chinese, and I would be truly surprised to find that they had not understood the consequences beforehand.
In my own view, the choice was brilliant, and was executed in a brilliant way. The first thing to note is that there IS NO INTERFERENCE issue at all: both systems can work simultaneously without causing problems to each other. What has been hindered is the ability of one side to jam the others' military system, i.e., to perform an act of war against the other. Obviously this is beyond the jurisdiction of the ITU or any international body, for that matter. So I agree completely with your first statement (not quoted) to the effect that the recent "agreement" is just talk. In fact, both sides simply agreed to some sort of mutual face-saving ritual dance so that they can bury the matter, at a time when Sino-European relations have improved and are on an upward trend.
The SINO-EU cooperation on this matter took place in the 2003-4 period when relations between the Europeans and the US were rocky due, among other things, to the war in Iraq. The differences between the Americans and the Europeans (primarily France and Germany) were negotiated and more or less fixed in early 2005, and of course, China was the loser. It was then that China made its choice on frequencies for the Beidu system. Naturally, this was interpreted everywhere as China "holding grudges", playing tit-for-tat, "stealing" intellectual property, etc.
However, it is pure strategy. For the Chinese, there were, presumably, two choices. The first would have been to use an independent frequency, which would have left the four players (GPS, GLONASS, Galileo and Beidu) more or less on equal terms. But that's too simple, and they opted for something more interesting: overlapping with one of the existing players. Now, choosing either GLONASS or GPS would be rather provocative as both Russia and the US have long "borders" with China, as well as areas of strategic friction, and both naturally want to keep their options open. It is different with Europe, in spite of all the noise the Europeans made over this matter. Europe may have commercial conflicts with China, or disagreements over ideological matters, but no actual strategic conflict with the country. Nor does China have any strong reason to resist European strategic interests anywhere in the world, to the extent that Europe-wide interests even exist.
China's eventual choice, in effect, amounts to an undeclared and unilateral non-aggression pact with the Europeans. Although it is limited to munitions guided by this type of system, China is promising not to attack Europe. It is a promise which I believe costs China nothing, but which gives it certain advantages vis-a-vis the US. As it stands, the US can jam the Chinese system, but not without simultaneously screwing the Europeans. China, of course, would retaliate by jamming the American system, nullifying any American advantage. This would leave GLONASS alone... a very uncomfortable situation for the US. In a sort of 3-way game of chicken, I think the US would then move to erase this Russian advantage, and this leaves the US acting against all three rival systems, while China only acts against one.
While China's choice looks like an infringement on European "rights", in fact it is a gift to them, and it is a perfect answer to the double American demand, back in 2004-5, that the Europeans should 1) exclude China, and 2) NOT utilize frequencies overlapping with the American system. It was the Americans that set up this framework; China simply took advantage of it.
