Business

The fourth undersea linking East Africa to the rest of the world - Lower Indian Ocean Network submarine cable (LION2) has gone live, offering another redundancy route (an alternative option) to Internet service operators.

The cable which is operated by Telkom Kenya, a subsidiary of the France Telecom Group, went live on Friday and is now commercially operational.

Telkom Kenya’s chief executive Mickhael Ghossein said the Sh5.7 billion (57 million Euros) cable is now operational and will significantly boost Kenya’s bandwidth capacity.

The submarine cable, which is the fourth to land in Mombasa after EASSy, TEAMS and SEACOM, is a 2,700 km long extension of the initial Lower Indian Ocean Network that connects Madagascar to the rest of the world, providing alternate onward connectivity from Kenya to Asia and Europe.