France Telecom and Partners Activate Indian Ocean Cable System

The second phase of the Lower Indian Ocean Network (LION) has been brought into commercial service by France Telecom-Orange and the other members of the LION2 consortium.


The LION cable, which links Madagascar to the global broadband network via the Réunion and Mauritius islands, has now been extended with a 2,700 km cable to Kenya via Mayotte. Through its landing station at Kaweni (Mamoudzou), LION2 will provide Mayotte, for the first time, with access to the broadband Internet. In Kenya, the LION2 cable is connected through a new landing station that has been built at Nyali, close to Mombasa. In addition, the new cable also provides an alternative route for passing secure broadband transmissions through Europe and Asia for all African countries in which the Group is located. The cable currently offers a maximum potential capacity of 1.28 Tbps and can be increased without additional submarine work.


The construction of the LION2 cable represents a total investment of around 57 million euros, about 38 million euros of which will come from France Telecom SA and its subsidiaries. Members of the LION2 consortium include Orange subsidiaries Mauritius Telecom, Orange Madagascar and Telkom Kenya, as well as two other operators, Emtel Ltd and Société Réunionnaise du Radiotéléphone.
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