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Europe’s GPS alternative has been offline since Friday

July 15, 2019

Via: The Verge
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Galileo, the European satellite navigation system, has been suffering a major outage since Friday, reports BBC News. The system’s status page currently lists all 22 of its satellites as either “Not Usable” or “Testing,” as part of an incident that started early Friday morning. In a statement, the European Global Navigation Satellite Systems Agency (GSA) said the system is being affected by a “technical incident related to its ground infrastructure.”

The outage means the satellites aren’t able to provide timing or positioning data to smartphones or other devices in Europe that normally use the system. As of February last year, over 30 smartphone models support Galileo, including iPhones released since 2017. But if you have one of these phones, you’re unlikely to notice the outage, as all affected devices will automatically switch to the US-operated Global Positioning System (GPS), according to BBC News.

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