Page 92: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (June 1999)

Communication Technology

Formal confirmation had been received from the Inmarsat-2 and

Inmarsat-3 satellite manufacturers that

Inmarsat's fleet has no on-board knowl- edge of dates and will not be affected by the rollover to the millennium. All

TT&C sites were completing their tests, with no major problems identified to date, although in some cases the GPS receivers needed to be upgraded.

In order to ensure product compliance by MESs, LESs and network co-ordina- tion stations (NCSs), Inmarsat ensured that the relevant System Definition

Manuals (SDMs) reflected Year 2000 requirements and the organization kept in regular contact with manufacturers to progress compliance tests.

The target for manufacturer comple- tion was set at December 31, 1998 so as to be consistent with Inmarsat's overall program.

Details of the status of specific MES models are available from the manufac- turers concerned, or on the Inmarsat website.

Year 2000 rears its head in August

But while the world gears itself up for those few days at the turn of the century when devastating chaos could be wreaked, at a cost of billions of dollars, in those industries and service sectors that have not checked their systems,

GPS users — most of whom are in the maritime industry — have even more to be worried about. They have to be ready four months before everyone else — because August 21 is when the GPS rollover will occur.

Some receivers of time signals from the GPS satellite fleet will hit problems at midnight on August 21/22,1999 when the 'week number' field cycles from 1023 to zero. Unless they have been cor- rectly programmed to handle this event, the receivers may well think themselves back in 1980.

Inmarsat's ground segment uses 16 of these vulnerable time receivers to keep its satellite control system in synch with its TT&C stations around the globe. "We have been pressing the receivers' manu-

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