MARS is a 700km subsea cable system linking the islands of Mauritius and Rodrigues in the Indian Ocean, offering high-speed, large capacity bandwidth between the two. It was announced in March as part of an agreement between PCCW Global and Mauritius Telecom.
The cable system will be built with a bandwidth design capacity of 16Tbps, and is due to be ready for service in 2019, with PCCW Global managing operation of the system.
Huawei Marine is tasked with construction of the MARS cable. Mike Constable, chief executive of Huawei Marine said: “As a global provider of submarine network solutions, Huawei Marine is pleased to partner again with E-Marine to deploy our high-speed submarine cable infrastructure which will help facilitate further economic development in the region.”
Rodrigues is the second largest island in the Republic of Mauritius with a population of around 40,000 people. The MARS cable will see residents able to access improved bandwidth and connectivity once it goes live.
E-marine, which offers both installation and maintenance services for subsea cables through its fleet of ships, has worked on several projects in the reason and maintains more than 100,000km of subsea cables.
Omar Jassim Bin Kalban, CEO of E-marine, said: “E-marine has worked on several local and international projects in the past providing an infrastructure that is robust and is able to meet the high capacity requirements of that country or region.
“We are committed to efficiently manage and implement these large-scale projects with innovative technologies and solutions. E-marine looks forward to work with Huawei Marine Networks on the MARS project which will bring enhanced connectivity to the East African region.”
