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Mauritius Aims To Be First Wireless Nation

Posted by Zonk on from the coast-to-coast dept.

hattan writes "This tropical island off the east coast of Africa is best-known for its white-sand beaches, its designer clothing outlets and its spicy curries. But tiny Mauritius is about to stake a new claim to fame. By year's end, or soon afterward, it is expected to become the world's first nation with coast-to-coast wireless Internet." From the article: "An undersea broadband fiber-optic cable, completed three years ago, gives the island fast and reliable phone and Internet links with the rest of Africa and with Europe, India and Malaysia. Many of the country's 1.2 million people--a mix of French, Indian, Chinese and African descendants--are bilingual or trilingual, speaking French, English and either Chinese or Hindi. The country is democratic, peaceful and stable."

2 of 333 comments (clear)

  1. From someone who lives there... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Hi, I live in Mauritius, the home of the extinct dodo.

    Country's bandwidth to the Internet: 128 Mbps

    Here is some information about Internet connectivity with the biggest ISP, Telecom Plus.
    266 US$/month - Business ADSL 1024/128
    147 US$/month - Business ADSL 512/128
    78 US$/month - Business ADSL 128/64

    40 US$/month - Residential ADSL 128/64
    60 US$/month - Residential ADSL 512/128
    266 US$/month - Residential ADSL 1024/128

    Taken from
    http://www.telecomplus.net/adsl_tariffs.htm
    1 US$ ~Rs 28
    VAT is at 15 %

    Oh, forget about getting dedicated >1mbps connections, they cost over 2,400 US$/month last time I checked.

    Also, Mauritius claims to home the most intelligent building in the world, the Ebene Cybertower.

    See, this is a great place to live, all the peace and quiet is here but if you want to move here to enjoy cheap, fast and reliable internet connectivity, its the wrong place to be.

    Information:
    www.mauritiustelecom.com
    www.gov. mu
    alt.mauritius

    Have a nice day.

  2. Mauritius is not paradise but it's a nice country by AvinashM · · Score: 3, Informative

    I am Mauritian, living and working in Mauritius right now.

    Mauritius is a small (about 1400 km2) tropical island not very far from Madagascar. Mauritius became independent in 1968, is a republic since 1991 and is, politically, stable with regular democratic elections every 5 years.

    For the last 20 years, the economy was based on sugar cane, tourism and the manufacturing sector (mostly textile). Now, with the ongoing globalisation, Mauritius has to find new avenues for development as we aren't competitive enough in those fields...

    The Government and the private sector have identified some new avenues, IT services and financial services, in addition to the further development of the existing tourism sector.

    As for IT, Government is concentrating on building new schools and giving incentives to the University of Mauritius (where I work as lecturer in Computer Science) to produce a more IT-litterate workforce (whatever that may mean). Mauritius has obtained a $100 million line of credit from India to build what is known here as CyberTowers and CyberCities.

    Of course, this migration towards a service-oriented economy will take some years. The Governement has already announced that the whole country will have to become a duty-free country (yeah :-) like Dubai and Singapore in order to attract more and more tourists.

    As everyone know, by 2008, owing to the World Trade Organisation, all countries including Mauritius will have to compete on the same level (there will be no more prefential agreements between countries nor any guaranteed quotas etc.)

    Small countries like mine need to move quickly or else we will perish.

    Wish us luck :-)