The U.S. Department of Transportation is recommending that users of the Global Positioning System (GPS) contact the manufacturers of their receivers before Aug. 19 because of a possible malfunction on that date.

The problem is an "end-of-the-week rollover," which occurs about once every 20 years. The GPS system calculates time by counting the number of weeks since Jan. 6, 1980, up to a maximum of 1,024 weeks. When the GPS week "counter" rolls over to zero weeks, it could present a problem for consumers who use GPS receivers and related applications.
Qualcomm, the leader in satellite tracking for the trucking industry, does not anticipate any problems. "QUALCOMM's domestic customers are equipped with QUALCOMM's proprietary satellite position reporting system, known as QASPR, for position location information," according to a company statement. "The QASPR system will not experience any date related malfunctions due to Week Number Rollover associated with GPS events occurring in August, 1999."
Qualcomm does offer GPS as an option, and has done extensive work to verify compliance of the GPS units. But all OmniTracs units do have QASPR installed.