Intelsat, a prominent provider of satellite communication services, has reported a significant service disruption on its Intelsat 33e satellite as of October 19, 2024. The outage has impacted a wide customer base across Europe, Africa, and certain areas of the Asia-Pacific region. Despite the passage of 48 hours since the incident, Intelsat has not yet announced when services will be restored. The company has expressed doubts regarding the satellite’s recoverability based on the current information at hand.
The technical issue with Intelsat 33e has led to a power failure, causing an interruption in the communication services provided to its customers. Intelsat is actively collaborating with Boeing, the entity responsible for the satellite’s design and manufacturing, to diagnose and resolve the issue.
The IS-33e satellite, a product of Boeing Space Systems, was initially launched in August 2016 and began its operational phase in January 2017. In response to the outage, Intelsat has been evaluating its fleet’s capacity and seeking assistance from third-party providers to minimize the impact on service continuity. The company has also been maintaining direct communication with all customers affected by the outage.
This incident is not an isolated one for Intelsat’s fleet. In 2019, another satellite, Intelsat 29e, experienced a malfunction in its propulsion system, which led to a propellant leak. Despite attempts to salvage the satellite, a subsequent anomaly occurred, and all recovery efforts were ultimately deemed unsuccessful.
The recent service disruption of IS-33e coincides with Intelsat’s launch of a new satellite cellular backhaul service platform in Nigeria, named Intelsat CellBackhaul Nigeria. This initiative is designed to improve connectivity infrastructure in Nigeria and across Africa, assisting mobile network operators (MNOs) and internet service providers (ISPs) in the region, particularly in Nigeria and West Africa. Intelsat’s statement highlighted that this new solution in Nigeria will join the company’s existing platforms in other African nations, aiming to provide services to millions across thousands of cellular towers.
As of November 2023, Intelsat had partnered with Africa Mobile Networks (AMN) to deploy over 3,000 rural base satellite antennas in various African countries since 2018, extending connectivity to more than 8 million individuals. The collaboration had plans to expand operations into Madagascar, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), with AMN’s most extensive network being situated in Nigeria.
