Mauritius
Mauritius lands four active submarine cables at two points on its coastline, threading the island nation into Indian Ocean routing between Africa, Asia and beyond — a cable footprint that belies its modest size.
Connectivity at a glance
- Cable systems
- 4active
- Landing points
- 2
- Resilience score
- 42
Cable systems serving Mauritius
| Cable | Status | Ready for service | Length | Design capacity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mauritius–Rodrigues Submarine Cable (MARS) | active | March 2019 }} | — | 8 Tbit/s |
| Lower Indian Ocean Network (LION) | active | 2009 }} | 1,000 km | 1.28 terabits per second |
| METISS Cable | active | — | — | — |
| South Africa Far East, SAFE | active | }} | 13,104 km | — |
Landing points
- * La Prairie, Mauritius* La Prairie
- Terre Rouge, MauritiusTerre Rouge
An island crossroads in the Indian Ocean
Mauritius sits roughly 2,000 kilometres off the east coast of Africa, far enough from any continental landmass that submarine cables are not a convenience but an absolute necessity. The island has no terrestrial connectivity options and no realistic alternative to the cables crossing the seabed beneath it.
Four active systems currently serve Mauritius, landing at two documented points: La Prairie and Terre Rouge. Together, these cables connect the island toward East Africa, South and Southeast Asia, and the broader Indian Ocean corridor.
The cable mix
The oldest system in service is the Lower Indian Ocean Network (LION), which entered service in 2009 and spans roughly 1,000 kilometres — a relatively short regional cable that stitches Mauritius into the East African coastal network.
The South Africa Far East (SAFE) cable is the longest of the four at 13,104 kilometres, a system that, as its name signals, connects southern Africa to Asia. Its presence on Mauritius gives the island a direct link to a high-capacity long-haul route that would otherwise require a diversion through continental landing points.
The Mauritius–Rodrigues Submarine Cable (MARS), commissioned in 2019, serves the specific purpose of linking Mauritius to its own outer island of Rodrigues — an internal connectivity solution rather than an international trunk route, but one that carries genuine strategic importance for national digital inclusion.
The METISS Cable rounds out the quartet. Detailed specifications for both METISS and SAFE's ready-for-service year are not yet recorded in this register, but METISS is understood to extend Mauritius's reach further into the western Indian Ocean region.
Capacity, resilience and geography
Four cables across two landing stations represents a meaningful degree of redundancy for an island of Mauritius's scale. The separation of landing points — La Prairie and Terre Rouge — means a single cable cut or localised infrastructure failure at one site does not automatically strand the entire network, provided the remaining cables carry sufficient spare capacity.
That said, the resilience picture is not unlimited. With only two physical landing stations, both terrestrial cable routes and the landing facilities themselves remain concentration points worth scrutiny. The diversity is real but not boundless.
Geography shapes everything here. Distance from continental shelf infrastructure, exposure to the cyclone-active southwest Indian Ocean, and the physical separation of outer islands like Rodrigues all reinforce why Mauritius has continued to invest in its cable portfolio rather than treat any single link as sufficient.