South Africa is set to gain another Indian Ocean subsea cable landing. Orange has announced a new submarine cable, ReuNION, that will run from La Réunion to the South African coast, with the French island’s operators moving to replace ageing infrastructure before it runs out of life.
The system will carry 16 fibre pairs at about 20Tbit/s each, giving it a design capacity of roughly 320Tbit/s. Orange Marine will deploy the cable and Alcatel Submarine Networks will design and manufacture it. Orange will act as landing party in Réunion.
The consortium brings together the public body La Réunion Connectée, which holds the bulk of the fibre pairs for onward commercialisation, alongside operators Orange, Réunicable and Telco OI, which trades locally as Free. The project is costed at about €93.1-million (R1.7-billion at the time of writing): €30-million from the European Regional Development Fund, €20-million through the EU’s Connecting Europe Facility, €36.6-million from the three operators and €6.5-million from the French state.
“This future cable is key to La Réunion’s digital development and regional growth – it will meet rising traffic demands and a need for resilience,” said Jean-Louis Le Roux, executive vice president of Orange International Networks.
The motivation is the ageing of the Safe cable, which entered service in April 2002 and runs 13 500km from Melkbosstrand and Mtunzini in South Africa through Réunion, Mauritius and India to Malaysia. Réunion’s operators expect Safe to reach the end of its working life from 2027. That would leave the Metiss cable, live since 2021 and landing at Amanzimtoti south of Durban, as the island’s only direct long-haul international cable, with the regional Lion systems running to Mauritius and Madagascar.
Busy pipeline
Orange has not named South African landing station, though Submarine Networks reports that the system is engineered to feed the Durban and Johannesburg metros. A second phase, extending the island eastwards to Singapore, has been mooted, with reporting on the island putting the cost at several hundred million euros. Orange has not confirmed a figure.
Next steps are marine surveys and permit applications, with manufacturing and cable laying to follow. Ready for service is expected in 2028.
For South Africa, ReuNION adds to a busy pipeline of projects planned or under construction. Google has pencilled in the Eastern Cape as the southern anchor of its Umoja route to Australia, Seacom is planning a 25 000km, 2 000Tbit/s successor to its original system, and Meta’s 2Africa and Project Waterworth cables both touch the country. — © 2026 NewsCentral Media
