The most interesting part of the whole write up is that it sheds light on how dependent of the base stations these constellations are. I used to think that, other than sending orbital corrections and the occasional fixes, the constellation would run itself. Apparently this is not the case.<p>So a localized outage can in fact affect the entire planet. This has also implications in disaster scenarios.<p>Not sure how applicable this is for GPS.
Just wanted to give you a little bit more info. I work for the Spanish company that has developed the OSPF, GMV, and although I'm not currently involved at all in this project, from what i know, the following statement: "around 5% of the Galileo capacity is lost to software problems likely in the Orbit Synchronization Processing Facility (OSPF), run by GMV." is not fully true. The OSPF receives data from sources (From my limited knowledge, time stations in order to generate the ephemeris), and it looks like the problem was not in the OSPF code but in one of these time stations sending the data.
When was the last time GPS had issues like this? I can imagine that during the early years this happened there as well? Or maybe not, as military quality engineering requirements were stricter.
My current impression from reading this article is that SpaceX could create a better GNSS than Galileo in a year as a side project - not because of their cheap launches, but because of their diy development culture. I am stunned by the level of organizational inadequacy of allowing such critical parts of the system to be developed by not just a contractor but a chain of subsidiary contractors, with feedback cycles that move at the speed of corporate communication. My expectation now is that Galileo will never catch up to GPS and will eventually be forgotten.