La Réunion brings high-speed broadband to its most remote communities

The outermost region of La Réunion, a French island in the Indian Ocean that is home to 850,000 people, devised a fibre deployment project in order to meet the 2025 European Gigabit Society objective of providing 100 Mbps broadband access to its most remote citizens, who are not covered by private companies’ infrastructure, with the aim of providing these disadvantaged areas with the same access conditions as the island’s more accessible areas.

As Denis Fabregue, the project Director, notes in this video interview, “It is clear that fibre contributes to improving the quality of life of our citizens”, “it allows for the creation of more jobs and businesses.” On this, Marylène Félix, a businesswoman now able to work remotely from L’Entre-Deux, underlines the difference that fibre connectivity makes, stating that “the fact of being connected to fibre is a luxury today that will become standard tomorrow”. 

Deploying fibre to the most remote areas of the island was challenging and involved many different approaches and solutions, including travelling through drinking water pipes through the heart of the mountains, employing divers to draw the fibre through submerged canals, and using a remote-controlled motor to drive a spinning machine along high-voltage cable lines to roll-out the fibre, as described by Glenn Duncan, Chief Engineer.   

This video was filmed as part of the European Broadband Competence Offices (BCO) Network’s work to raise awareness of EU support for high-speed broadband deployment and share good practices in broadband projects. Discover more interviews in the BCO Network YouTube playlist and more broadband good practices, news and resources in the BCO Network Library.

Find more information about EU Support for Broadband rollout and broadband in EU countries.