LEO satellite operator Eutelsat OneWeb says last week’s service outage that lasted for 48 hours was down to a software glitch in its ground segment that didn’t take leap years into account.
Eutelsat’s LEO satellite service suddenly went offline on December 31, and stayed that way until January 2. According to a statement from Eutelsat, the root cause was identified as “a software issue within the ground segment”.
According to Space News, a Eutelsat spokesperson further clarified that the glitch was the result of the software being unaware that 2024 was a leap year with 366 days.
The outage affected connectivity partners such as satellite solutions and services provider Q-KON and MTN subsidiary Bayobab that sell enterprise solutions using OneWeb.
Eutelsat Oneweb said it was in “constant dialogue with affected customers” the entire time, and the LEO satellite network service was restored on January 2.
