A problem in a British satellite has caused an outage that is affecting some GPS services and some marine safety systems across the Asia Pacific.
Global satellite company Inmarsat originally reported to its service providers that it was dealing with an extended outage in its Inmarsat I-4F1 satellite.
In an update at 9:30am on Tuesday, Inmarsat advised service providers that "recovery procedures to restore services on the Inmarsat I-4F1 Satellite are ongoing".
It said it anticipated reactivating the payload in approximately 10–12 hours and would give an update at approximately 7pm AEST today.
Farmers across Australia and New Zealand rely on GPS for planting and sowing, and businesses that sell technology that relies on GPS have been inundated with calls.
Big agricultural brands and services are caught up in the outage, including John Deere, Case, Ag Leader and Trimble.
Roger Hobday from Sprayerbarn in Dubbo said it took about 200 calls from frustrated farmers yesterday.
"We're getting calls from Western Australia, Queensland, New South Wales, north and south Victoria, and we believe it's affecting New Zealand."
There is a workaround for farmers, which is a free signal, but it is nowhere near as accurate as the satellite service.
Farmers go back to the old days
New South Wales farmer Justin Everett, who grows wheat, canola and barley, said he had been affected by the outage, and it had taken his operation back about 25 years.
"I haven't been in a tractor without auto-steer for 15 years. It's going back to the 1990s, really."
Scott Neville, who crops 1,700 hectares in New South Wales, said a lot of boom sprays were out of operation.
He has got a workaround for now, using the old free-to-air GPS that is a lot less accurate, but he said he was disappointed with the lack of information on the outage.
"It's not good. It should be better, we're in the 21st century, and communications need to be a lot better."
Maritime safety also affected
The same satellite outage affecting GPS systems on farms in Australia is also affecting shipping.
On Tuesday, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority told the ABC it was advised by Inmarsat that its Global Maritime Distress and Safety System was also experiencing a significant outage.
A spokesperson for the authority said that other distress systems were still operating, such as EPIRB.
The outage is also affecting communications at sea, but the authority said ships were still able to communicate via HF radio.
