Abstract The giant Sumatra-Andaman earthquake of December 26, 2004 caused permanent deformations effects in a region of previously never observed extension. The GPS data from the worldwide network of permanent IGS sites show significant coseismic displacements in an area exceeding 107 km2, reaching most of South-East Asia, besides Indonesia and India. We have analyzed long GPS time series histories in order to characterize the noise type of each site and, consequently, to precisely assess the formal errors of the coseismic offset estimates. The synthetic simulations of the coseismic displacement field obtained by means of a spherical model using different rupture histories indicate that a major part of the energy release took place in a fault plane similar to that obtained by Ammon et al. (2005) and Vigny et al. (2005) but with a larger amount of compressional slip on the northern segment of the fault area.