Spacecom loses contact with Amos-5

Amos-5, Spacecom said, is 65 percent filled and the company is working to find alternative capacity.

However, Space-Communications, which owns the satellite, now says it had "no information" on the precise nature of the problem, nor whether the loss is total.

Israeli satellite operator Spacecom lost contact at 06:45 a.m Saturday Israeli time with its Amos 5 communications satellite in orbit over Africa, causing service disruption to an unspecified number of customers - mostly in Africa. The majority of clients were based or feeding bandwidth into Africa. "Spacecom is being completely transparent with our clients".

CETel is a German provider of global satellite, fiber and wireless enabled communications solutions with a portfolio that covers the full range of partly and fully managed services for customers from key industries, such as Mining, Energy, Corporate, Banking or NGOs.

The company sent a statement about the matter to the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, saying the satellite loss will be covered by an Dollars 158 million insurance policy and will have a minimal impact on its finances.

Amos-5 has had problems before, BroadbandTVnews reported.

Prior to its silencing, Amos-5 was working at 65pc load capacity, which, given the amount of data being processed, is a considerable amount to redistribute to the four other satellites operated by the company.

It was also considered an exceptional deal for Spacecom, costing $157 million for the satellite's construction and launch in December 2011 aboard a Russian Proton rocket.

The next Amos satellite to be launched is Amos-6, scheduled to launch in February 2016, but will be placed at the 4 degrees West position, while Amos-5 is stationed at 17 degrees East.

"Spacecom is working around the clock, doing the utmost to speed service recovery for its customers", Spacecom Chief Executive David Pollack said in a November 22 statement.