This interview emphasized the blunder which SA’s politicians made when chasing away Korean KTC’s proposed deal with Telkom. A similar deal by Mauritius Telecom with France Telecom (now Orange) has reaped huge rewards for the island state. Listen to the bandwidth speeds and coverage in the interview below – speeds to the home that are unheard of in SA. Also, Satellite TV doesn’t stand a chance in Mauritius where bandwidth is so good that households are served by 50 channel IPTV. And some wonder why Mauritius has overtaken SA in the Global Competitiveness League? – AH
To watch the video of the interview on CNBC Africa’s Power Lunch click here.
ALEC HOGG: Now with 600 communication, information and technology companies that are currently operating on the island have emerged as international and competitive in a global sense. It’s helped Mauritius itself to be an ICT destination and of course, if you want to be good at ICT you’ve got to have a broadband. Sarat Lallah is the Chief Executive of Orange Mauritius Telecom. Sarat, it’s good to hear that broadband is now going to be piped into homes. You’ve put in optic fibre into homes in Mauritius. That surely would put you ahead of the game or ahead of most African countries.
SARAT LALLAH: Yes – surely. This is a very important project for Mauritius Telecom in a sense that as the income brand operator in Mauritius we are the leader in the fixed and mobile Internet market since 2006. We decided on a broadband Mauritius policy and introduced ADSL in Mauritius. Through the ADSL we introduced also IPTV. That was seven years ago. And all that was done on our copper wire network, but what we have witnessed in the past years is that the demand for data is becoming more and more important. And to be able to respond to that we embarked on a fibre-optic policy. In fact we started back in 1997 to connect all our exchanges with optic fibre and then, by the end of 2000 we already had the backbone of optic fibre in our network. And later on the demand on the business side increased and we decided to embark on a project of fibre to the business. So to date, 200 business are connected already on fibre. Most government officials, our import risk centre and the centre of port risks are connected with fibre and there are some areas like Ebene, Cyber City, like the Bagatelle project in Ebene and the airport are all connected on optic fibre which gives them a capacity with a speed of up to 1 Gig. Then the next step was to connect homes. Last year we embarked on a project – pilot project – to connect some 550 homes in two areas in Mauritius and this test has proved to be very positive and so we decided and launched last week, that fibre to the home project with the intention of connecting, to the end of 2016, 50% of the homes in Mauritius. What does that mean? That means that people in Mauritius will start getting Internet, high-speed Internet, up to 30mbps, so this is in response to the demand of the public.
ALEC HOGG: That’s extremely rapid – 30mbps. In South Africa, if you’re getting 1mb you’re doing fine. If you’re getting 5mb it’s outstanding. It’s a big leap for yourselves – Orange Mauritius Telecom. You relationship with the French Telecom or France Telecom: has that helped in this respect?
SARAT LALLAH: Yes. In fact, in 2002 France Telecom purchased 40% of the stakes in Mauritius Telecom, so we’re considered Orange now because France Telecom has become Orange since a few months ago and we consider Orange as a strategic partner. So they have been helpful in sharing with us the technology and in fact, when I said we introduced the multi-play IPTV in Mauritius since 2006, it is thanks to this partnership. The multi-play that I’m talking about now is that we give to the home through our copper wire, broadband Internet starting from 512kbps, 1mbps, 2mbps and up to 4mbps and 50 television channels, Wi-Fi in the home, video on demand and all these were done on the copper wire.
