Galileo it is the GPS system of the European Agency GNASS, it has been having serious problems for several days and is not working, according to the information provided by its representatives. Galileo was thought of as an alternative to GPS, the official name of the US positioning system, Glonass, of the Russians, and Beidou, the global geolocation system that was developed by the Chinese, the Europeans having everything for now only in a testing phase .
However, Galileo has been unavailable for several days for all devices that can connect to it, so it does not transmit information that allows geolocation, so anyone who relies on it is left without a solution. The problem is based on technical difficulties at an Italian location intended to provide the most accurate information about the time, and thus Galileo cannot provide information about geolocation for the limited number of devices that use it.
Galileo, the European GPS, has NOT been working for a few days
Galileo had problems announced by the representatives who monitor the system on Thursday, but on Friday an announcement was sent according to which the system is unavailable due to technical problems in Italy. Despite the fact that the system can no longer do geolocation, the good part is that it can still receive emergency messages for searching and rescuing people, but unfortunately it cannot provide a location for the area from which the message came.
"Galileo, the EU's satellite navigation system, is currently affected by a technical incident related to its ground infrastructure. The incident has led to a temporary interruption of the Galileo initial navigation and timing services, with the exception of the Galileo Search and Rescue (SAR) service. The SAR service – used for locating and helping people in distress situations for example at sea or mountains – is unaffected and remains operational.”
Galileo operates with 26 earth-orbiting satellites to provide services identical to those that the US GPS system has been providing for several decades, thereby easing congestion in that network. Europe's geolocation system was launched in 2016, but it is still in the testing phase, so it is used on few devices, and those who use it know that problems of this kind can appear at any time, even without being announced.
For now, it is not known when exactly the problems of the European satellite geolocation system could be solved, so it remains to be seen what will happen with it.
