Lowrance, Simrad and B&G announce products will not be affected by GPS Week Rollover

2019 GPS Week Rollover will not adversely impact Simrad device © Andrew Golden

Lowrance, Simrad and B&G leading brands in the design and manufacture of world-class marine navigation, autopilot, radar, communications and fishfinding systems announced today that the 2019 GPS Week Rollover will not adversely impact their products. Experts in Research and Development from Lowrance, Simrad and B&G have been preparing for the upcoming event for months, testing a wide range of equipment and have confirmed that all current generation devices are 100-percent compatible with the GPS rollover event.

The Global Positioning System (GPS) has its own date and time scale based on counting weeks and seconds within a week; however, the field that contains the week number is limited to 1024. A GPS rollover event occurs when this counter reaches week 1023 and then rolls back to week 0. The event happens approximately every 20 years, with the upcoming GPS Week Rollover taking place on April 6, 2019. This will be the second time the rollover has occurred.

Of all products currently available from Lowrance, Simrad or B&G, none have any known issues with GPS Week Rollover. The GPS chipset suppliers used by the three brands were aware of this event and had this covered in their test and validation plans for the more recent chipset designs.

"We are continuing to work through our product portfolio to identify any legacy products that may not function correctly following the GPS Week Rollover event and we are producing software updates where required," said Alan Davis, Product Line Director at Navico. "Lowrance, Simrad and B&G expect to support all products produced within the last 10 years approximately with software updates if a fix is required. Typically affected products will still show correct position but display incorrect date and time; in extreme cases position may be affected."

For information on the GPS Week Rollover, please visit www.lowrance.com/gps-rollover, www.simrad-yachting.com/gps-rollover or www.bandg.com/gps-rollover.

For more information on the Navico brands, please visit www.lowrance.com, www.simrad-yachting.com, pro.simrad-yachting.com, www.bandg.com and www.c-map.com, and to find out more about the Navico Group of companies, visit www.navico.com.