France Teelcom In Bid For LION2 Cable

Click For Larger Image - Source France Telecom

France Telecom and the other members of the LION2 consortium have signed an agreement to build a new submarine cable in the Indian Ocean. The agreement comes less than a year after the inauguration of the LION (Lower Indian Ocean Network) submarine cable linking Madagascar to the rest of the world via Reunion Island and Mauritius.

With this latest agreement, France Telecom enters the second phase of its Indian Ocean development plan, pursuing its strategy for the regional expansion of broadband internet.

The 3,000km LION2 cable will extend the LION cable to Kenya via the island of Mayotte. The cable will provide Mayotte with access to a broadband internet network benefiting from a transmission capacity and service quality equivalent to those available in Europe. For Kenya, LION2 is an important project that will strengthen its connectivity to international networks and cover its capacity requirements for years to come. The project is being conducted by a consortium of France Telecom and its subsidiaries Mauritius Telecom, Orange Madagascar and Telkom Kenya, along with carrier companies Emtel, Societe Reunionnaise du Radiotelephone and STOI Internet.

The construction of the LION2 cable represents a total investment of around EUR56.5 million, about EUR31.25 million of which will come from France Telecom. Service is scheduled to begin in the first half of 2012.

LION2 relies on wavelength division multiplexing (WDM), enabling capacity to be increased without additional submarine work. The maximum potential capacity is 1.28Tbps. Two new landing stations will be built, one in Kaweni for Mayotte and the other at Nyali near Mombasa for Kenya. The second of these is doubled up with existing stations and will be used to redirect traffic if needed.

Madagascar Connects To EASSy

Madagascar has been connected to the Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSy), AfricaNews.com reports. Fixed line incumbent Telecom Malagasy (Telma) has announced that it has already put in place a national backbone that will allow it to connect its subscribers to the cable, and it is expected that the arrival of the link will allow for the development of outsourcing activities, such as call centres. EASSy will supposedly enable the transfer of data at speeds 40 times faster than dial-up connections, and 27 operators from 22 countries across Africa’s eastern coast have invested approximately USD260 million in the deployment of the cable so far.

The arrival of the EASSy connection is the second significant cable landing reported in Madagascar in the last twelve months.  In June 2009 Madagascar’s largest mobile operator by subscribers, Orange Madagascar, announced the completion of its submarine cable project, LION, connecting the cable at Tamatave in the Toamasina region. Funded by Orange Madagascar, France Telecom and Mauritius Telecom, the 1,800km broadband cable links with the existing SAT3/WASC and SAFE cable and has a capacity of 1.3Tbps, and it also connects Madagascar with the islands of Reunion and Mauritius.