4 PROJECT JUSTIFICATION AND ALTERNATIVES

4.1 PROJECT JUSTIFICATION & PRESS RELEASE

The METISS project was initiated in 2015. It is a submarine cable system running from to South Africa through Reunion and .

METISS members foresee a huge demand for data services in the Indian Ocean islands and seek to secure their capacity needs in terms of IP transit, cloud access and Content Delivery Network/peering access in South Africa either through a carrier neutral data centre or via onwards cables on the east and west coast of Africa. The landing of the cable in South Africa is of strategic interest to the consortium. South Africa is becoming a major ICT Hub in the region it is expected that around 80% of the content and IP Transit will be purchased in South Africa instead of buying same from Europe. The objectives of South Africa landing are:  a landing point that ensures trouble-free operations from hazards both at the wet segment and land cable segment;  redundant architecture that is robust against damages to the land cable;  accessibility and relatively fast time-to repair;  the METISS Point Of Presence (POP) would enable its members to access IP transit and other carrier services from multiple providers in an open competitive environment including backhaul to other submarine cables in South Africa.

In a nutshell, the purpose of this cable system is to provide adequate capacity for connectivity between the countries and in South Africa. It also a necessity since the existing SAFE cable system will reach end of life in less than 5 years.

The METISS cable is an unprecedented project in many ways: first, it is a project that federates operators who could have kept to the competitive logic of the sector; secondly, it is an open and shared infrastructure that offers new alternatives to Internet service providers; finally, it is a typical Indian Ocean initiative that will connect the region to the high international bandwidth.

4.2 ALTERNATIVES The project has been assessed in terms of the following alternatives:  Alternatives for the location of the beach landing of the submarine cable in Mauritius.  Alternatives for the routing of the cable for the beach manhole, across the lagoon and to the open sea.  Alternatives to the methodology for laying of the cable.

4.2.1 LOCATION OF THE BEACH LANDFALL IN MAURITIUS Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks (ASN) has commissioned Elettra Tlc to provide a Cable Route Survey (CRS) describing the METISS Submarine Cable System in the eastern part of Africa. Elettra Tlc has appointed GeoTeam srl to provide support for this activity.

The marine cable landing site visits were undertaken by Emtel / CEB Fibernet, Alcatel and GeoTeam personnel between Monday 4th February and Friday 9th February 2018. The recommended landfall was Le Goulet Beach, Baie du Tombeau where Mauritius which is also the LION undersea .

EMTEL Ltd. 4-1 March 2019 METISS Submarine Cable – Mauritius Landing

As Le Goulet beach in Baie du Tombeau is a well-established cable landing point with a non-anchoring zone to protect against damages by ship’s anchors, no secondary option was researched. The original Landing Point (LP) and Beach Man Hole (BMH) location selected to the northern part of the Bay was found to potentially cause a shallow water crossing with the existing LION cable due to the existing cable’s orientation of lay. Therefore, alternate BMH and LP positions were assessed. The METISS cable also needs to be planned outside the Port Louis port limits, which terminate in the Baie du Tombeau. These restrictions defined the northern and southern limits of the METISS cable at this landing point as shown below.

Figure 4-1: METISS cable Landing Point at Le Goulet

The landing point retained at Le Goulet beach is located in the central part of the Baie d