Satellite operator Arabsat has confirmed one of its satellites has suffered a complete failure this week.
The Badr 6 satellite at 26°E fell off air on Monday afternoon. Technicians at Arabsat attempted but failed to restart operations on the satellite, which services the Middle East and North Africa, but can also be received across southern Europe.
As a result of the outage, services have been moved to other Badr satellites at 26°E. Badr 6 carried a range of free-to-air services, including CNN International.
The satellite launched in summer 2008 with an expected lifetime of 15 years.
In a statement, Arabsat said:
Arabsat experts and its engineering team immediately engaged with customers and smoothly implemented a restoration plan to bring DTH services back successfully. With state-of-the-art technology and backup solutions, Arabsat always assures service reliability to the end users with high standards. we express regret for the disruption of our customers and viewers experience.