While the first plane from the civil protection force was able to land in Mayotte on Sunday, December 15, at 3 pm local time (1:30 pm Paris time), in the aftermath of Cyclone Chido, carrying emergency equipment and medical personnel, the island has remained virtually cut off from the rest of the world due to major damage to telecoms networks.
The wind damaged many cell phone towers, and power outages have been preventing the usage of those that survived intact. Landline connections have also been severely disrupted. SFR, Mayotte’s second-largest provider after Orange, reported that some fiber-optic lines were damaged. The number three provider is Telco OI (owned by Xavier Niel, a member of the supervisory board of the Le Monde Group).
“Everything is cut off: phone lines, WhatsApp, Facebook, power lines, roads… We can’t get any news from people in the south, the center, the north or Petite-Terre (the small island opposite the capital Mamoudzou),” said Ousseni Balahachi when contacted by AFP. “The south of the island is the most isolated, as the network there is essentially mobile because the area has little landline-access coverage (ADSL),” Faouzat MLI, deputy director general in charge of human development at the Mayotte Departmental Council, told Le Monde. She had previously worked at length on digital and telecoms issues. Residents have also been finding it difficult to charge their cell phones due to power outages.
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