One of Orange's fleet of cable ships, the Leon Thevenin, makes Cape Town Harbour its home port and is always ready to ensure business continuity for Orange Business Services' customers, whether to embark on repair voyages or on missions to deploy cabling required to keep the African continent connected to the world.

South Africa-based enterprise customers of Orange Business Services had the opportunity to tour the ship last week to discover how Orange contributes to the development of the broadband infrastructure in Africa. The tour, hosted by the Commandant of the ship Gerald Couturier and Vice President of the Middle East and Africa (MEA) Region for Orange Business Services Jean-Luc Lasnier, included a close look at how Orange Marine installs and maintains more than 170 000km of submarine cables in the world's oceans, including 140 000km of optic fiber.

One of five ships in the fleet, the 107-metre Leon Thevenin has a particular focus on maintenance operations. She was built to sail in deep seas and withstand poor weather conditions. This cable ship is equipped with traditional cable tools and an underwater remotely operated vehicle (ROV) that is used for detection, cutting, recovery, jointing and testing of cables at depths of between 10 and 7 000 metres.

"We are committed to connecting our enterprise customers in hard-to-reach places and ensuring business continuity for them whether they operate domestically in South Africa, on the African continent, or globally," said Yannick Decaux, Country Manager, South Africa, Orange Business Services. "The commitment of the Orange Group to business growth on the African continent includes the installation and maintenance of undersea cables that make connectivity on the continent possible."

Orange Business Services delivers services across 40 African countries and has the most comprehensive range of fully-owned physical assets available in the market, offering last mile access and global connectivity. Through a range of access technologies, including MPLS-based VPNs, cable infrastructure and VSAT broadband, Orange delivers services even to hard-to-reach or mobile sites through is network which has 138 points of presence across MEA.