A handful of Egyptian state television channels – including Channel 1, Egyptian Satellite TV and some Nile TV channels – abruptly vanished from the airwaves on Sunday evening.
While the channels eventually resumed terrestrial transmissions, satellite transmissions had yet to be restored as of 7:45pm local time.
Salah Hamza, managing director of NileSat, the satellite television platform that carries the channels, said: "The connection was broken by sources outside Egypt; investigations are ongoing to determine the source [of the disconnection]."
Hamza said Channel 1 and Egyptian Satellite TV had been set to a new frequency in order to resume broadcasting, while Nile TV channels, too, were in the process of being set to new frequencies.
Ali Abdel-Rahman, head of Nile TV channels, told Al-Ahram's Arabic-language news website that "no one knows the reason for the technical problem until now now."
Abdel-Rahman went on to stress that Ismail El-Shishtawy, head of the Egyptian Radio and Television Union, was working to resolve the problem with NileSat management.
