Mauritius Telecom is currently in discussions with operators such as Reliance Jio and Orange to construct a new undersea cable that will connect Africa, the Indian Ocean islands, and Asia. This initiative aims to prevent network disruptions similar to the outage experienced last month.
According to a report by Bloomberg, Mauritius Telecom's CEO, Kapil Reesaul, announced that the new cable, named T4, will have 1,000 times more capacity than the current South Africa Far East (SAFE) cable that it will replace.
Reesaul stated, "With the frequent cable breakdowns we are facing, we want to ensure connectivity to the Far East with a cable running from Mauritius to India and Singapore." The decision to build the new cable was influenced by a recent service outage on April 26 that affected customers for five hours.
This incident followed the severe damage sustained by four cables near the Ivory Coast the previous month, with three lines off the coast of Yemen remaining offline since late February. The T4 cable will follow a similar route to the existing 13,500-kilometer SAFE cable, which connects South Africa, Madagascar, La Reunion, Mauritius, India, and Singapore.
Also Read: Internet Outage Hits West, Central Africa Due to Subsea Cable Failures
Notably, Mauritius Telecom previously invested USD 60 million in the T3 cable to South Africa, and the island-nation is also connected via the LION/LION2-EASSy-EIG cable on the northern route.
