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Galileo sat-nav system experiences service outage
Europe's satellite-navigation system, Galileo, has suffered a major outage. The network has been offline since Friday due to what has been described as a "technical incident related to its ground infrastructure". The problem means all receivers, such as the latest smartphone models, will not be picking up any useable timing or positional information.
These devices will be relying instead on the data coming from the American Global Positioning System (GPS). Depending on the sat-nav chip they have installed, cell phones and other devices might also be making connections with the Russian (Glonass) and Chinese (Beidou) networks.
[...] The specialist sat-nav publication Inside GNSS said sources were telling it that the problem lay with a fault at a Precise Timing Facility (PTF) in Italy. A PTF generates and curates the reference time against which all clocks in the Galileo system are checked and calibrated.
The function on Galileo satellites that picks up distress beacon messages for search and rescue is said to be unaffected by the outage.
[...] Europe's alternative to GPS went "live" with initial services in December 2016 after 17 years of development. The European Commission promotes Galileo as more than just a back-up service; it is touted also as being more accurate and more robust.
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(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Tuesday July 16 2019, @07:26AM (1 child)
I just read the latest article I could find [insidegnss.com] on the outage. It has apparently been down for six days now. The article notes that the Galileo organization itself is not providing any information - it's all coming from inofficial sources.
Then this interesting note from one of their sources: “When you provide this kind of service you are supposed to struggle to the death and at all costs to guarantee availability and continuity first, and performance immediately thereafter. This is not the present mentality.”
I've been involved in a couple of EU projects in the past. I now avoid them. There was always lots of emphasis on international cooperation, on distributing the tasks among all of the participants, even if this made no sense for the project itself. But that was ok, because there was no sense of urgency: If any work got done, it was more by accident than intent. From that last comment, I gather that this is the case with Galileo as well.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday July 16 2019, @02:38PM
> There was always lots of emphasis on international cooperation, on distributing the tasks among all of the participants
Also great dedication to paperwork - lots of receipts for every expenditure, which presumably someone is tracking. Lots of pseudo-"contracts" which involve writing regular reports, which presumably someone is tracking. But no real work has to be produced, as long as the report is written the content could be anything.