Unalaska, AK – Unalaska residents are advised to hit up the bank, because next week all the bars might be cash bars. This isn't because they're setting up a cartel. There's just a chance that their credit card reader just might not work thanks to a drifting satellite that might interfere with GCI's signal to the island.

Between August 11 and August 14, what's being described as a "wayward" satellite will float a little to close to the Galaxy 18 satellite that GCI and Alaska wireless use to provide service to the state's rural areas. The bandit Galaxy 15 satellite that's causing all of the trouble experienced a technical failure in April that has caused to lose its position. David Morris, vice president for GCI, explains what exactly happens when the two satellites meet.

"When it gets close to a satellite that's in its proper orbital location, what it does is mimic the same communication that that satellite is having with Earth stations on the ground," says Morris. "And the noise just becomes so great that it makes no sense at all."

So what does this all mean practically? Local calls should work, but long distances ones won't. People needing to call off the island will need to use a 1-800 number provided by GCI to do so. GCI is also working to make sure that medical facilities still have phone access for emergency situations.

The bigger problem though is that the interference may affect the island's internet connection - which means that ATMs and credit card readers also might not be usable. Lori Smith is the food and beverage operations manager for the Grand Aleutian. She says that the hotel and its restaurants does much of its business over credit card and that this outage will have a significant impact.

"It definitely would affect business. I'm not sure what our plan would be if that happened," says Smith. "Without giving it much thought, I'm not sure what we would do."

Telalaska customers however, shouldn't be concerned about GCI's outage. Celine Kaplan who works for the company says that while the companies satellites might experience simultaneous outages due to sunspots, this issue is completely different.

"We are on a completely different satellite with a different provider," says Kaplan.

The outages will affect an area spanning Southwestern all the way to Northern Alaska, and they are estimated to start at 7am next Wednesday and finish up at 9:30am that Saturday.