London (CNN Business) A European satellite program that provides location data to smartphones and navigation systems is suffering a major outage.

Galileo, the European Union's Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), is designed to rival the US-controlled Global Positioning System (GPS) and Russia's GLONASS system.

Over the weekend, the European GNSS Agency (GSA) said that Galileo was suffering from a full system outage due to a "technical incident related to its ground infrastructure."

"Experts are working to restore the situation as soon as possible. An Anomaly Review Board has been immediately set up to analyze the exact root cause and to implement recovery actions," GSA said in a statement Sunday.

Issues with the system were first reported on Thursday.

Galileo was designed to rival the US-controlled Global Positioning System (GPS) and Russia's GLONASS system.

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