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What’s new: The Qatar Ministry of Transport issued a circular temporarily halting all maritime activity for the nation and its waters because of “a technical fault in the GPS.”
Why it’s important: Maritime activity is the lifeblood of many nations. Especially a small one like Qatar that imports almost everything it needs and exports oil to pay for it. Almost all the flows both ways depend on maritime, of course.
What else to know:
- We checked GPSJam.org and did not see any interference near Qatar for the 5th of October.
UPDATE: Francisco Gallardo López commented on our original post on LinkedIn that a graphic on the Stanford site did show a lot of interference around Qatar for that day:
- This announcement could be a signal of something serious, or it could be stray voltage.
- We called the Qatar Embassy in Washington to find out more, but they didn’t answer the phone.
- We reached out to the Qatar MOT by email and have not heard back.
- There really are more questions than answers on this one.
MOT Orders Temporary Suspension of Maritime Activities
5 Oct 2025
The Ministry of Transport has ordered all maritime vessel owners to temporarily suspend navigation activities.
The decision follows discovery of a technical fault in the Global Positioning System (GPS), which may effect accuracy of maritime devices and compromise sailing safety.
