The ROA Time is the official time of Spain. It is established by the ROA, the Royal Institute and Observatory of the Armada (Armada being the name of the Spanish Navy in Spanish), at San Fernando, Cádiz.
Broadcasting ways
The ROA broadcast the official time in Spain in the following ways:
- Transmission of time signals in HF in two daily intervals of 25 minutes. From 10:00 UTC to 10:25 UTC in 15006 kHz and from 10:30 UTC to 10:55 UTC in 4998 kHz. The station is a Harris RF-130 with 1kW of power broadcasting from San Fernando (Cádiz). This station is the only broadcast of official time in Spain because there is not any longwave station broadcasting time signals like DCF77 from Germany or MSF60 (also known as NPL) from United Kingdom.
- Via hotline (Phone number: +34 956 59 94 29), using a time information broadcasting protocol widely used in Europe (European Telephone Code Standard). The access is limited to two minutes per call and admits international calls.
- NTP Protocol (Network Time Protocol), through two Internet servers placed in San Fernando and a third one placed in Madrid (NTP Server: hora.roa.es).
- Timestamping. The ROA, as a TSA (Time Stamping Authority), provides a timestamping server for official certifications through a standard digital certificate x509 v3. This system is used by the whole public administration in Spain for timestamping their transactions. This service is available through the SARA Network (Sistema de Aplicaciones y Redes para las Administraciones).
References
ROA Time Wikipedia(Text) CC BY-SA