The mass media in

Mauritius Mauritius ( ; french: Maurice, link=no ; mfe, label=Mauritian Creole, Moris ), officially the Republic of Mauritius, is an island nation in the Indian Ocean about off the southeast coast of the African continent, east of Madagascar. It incl ...

is limited by its small population size (estimated at 1,288,000 in 2008). Nonetheless, Mauritius has a robust economy, and there are a number of major media outlets, including print newspapers, radio and television stations.

Newspapers

Publications appear in French and sometimes English, while others are in an

Indigenous language An indigenous language, or autochthonous language, is a language that is native to a region and spoken by indigenous peoples. This language is from a linguistically distinct community that originated in the area. Indigenous languages are not neces ...

Press freedom

Section 12(1) of the Constitution of Mauritius provides for a presumption of freedom of speech. Section 287 and 287A of the Criminal Code allows a court to ban newspapers for sedition. Section 299 of the Criminal Code makes "publishing false news" a crime. The Newspaper and Periodicals Act was enacted in 1837. In 1984, a Newspapers and Periodicals Bill was proposed to make it mandatory for newspapers to deposit a financial bond of MUR 500,000 to be allowed to continue to operate. The bill was opposed by the media. Forty-four journalists were arrested for protesting against the bill. In January 2015, a court sentenced the then Vice-Prime Minister to a meager monetary fine for having led an illegal demonstration in front of a daily newspaper and damaged some window panes of the building. In June 2016, the speaker of the National Assembly, banned the editor in chief of a news magazine from the National Assembly for four sessions because of an editorial about Hanoomanjee’s alleged bias in the National Assembly.

Television

The

Mauritius Broadcasting Corporation The Mauritius Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) is the national public broadcasting, public broadcaster of the Republic of Mauritius, that is the islands of Mauritius, Rodrigues, and Agaléga. The headquarters of the MBC is found at Réduit, Moka, i ...

is the national public television and radio broadcaster. It broadcasts programming in French, English, Hindi, Creole and Chinese. It also operates also in the island of

Rodrigues Rodrigues (french: Île Rodrigues, link=yes ; Creole: ) is a autonomous outer island of the Republic of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, about east of Mauritius. It is part of the Mascarene Islands, which include Mauritius and Réunion. Rodr ...

and

Agaléga Agaléga (french: îles Agaléga) is a dependency of Mauritius which consists of two outer islands located in the Indian Ocean, about north of Mauritius Island. The population of the islands as at July 2011 was estimated at 289. The islands h ...

. Other television broadcaster include

Canalsat Canal+ is a French subscription provider associated to the channel of the same name. It is owned by Vivendi (owner of Canal+) with a hundred percent share. History In 1992, Canalsatellite was launched, the shareholders were Canal+ Group (66 pe ...

, Parabole Maurice, London Satellite Systems and

DStv Digital Satellite Television, commonly abbreviated to DStv, is a Sub-Saharan African direct broadcast satellite service owned by MultiChoice and based in Randburg, South Africa. Launched on 6 October 1995, the service provides multiple audio, ...

Radio

There are nine Mauritian FM radio stations and two operating on the AM band. The most listened station is Radio Plus followed by Top FM.

Literature

Magazines

Telecommunications

The principal service provider is the public entity

Mauritius Telecom Mauritius Telecom (MT) is a telecommunications company in Mauritius, a small republic in the Indian Ocean. The company had about 392,000 fixed line customers, 969,000 Mobile customers, 404,000 fibre ready homes, 178,000 iptv customers, 255,000 B ...

together with its strategic partner

Orange S.A. Orange S.A. (), formerly France Télécom S.A. (stylized as france telecom) is a French multinational telecommunications corporation. It has 266 million customers worldwide and employs 89,000 people in France, and 59,000 elsewhere. In 2015, ...

Other service provider include

Emtel Emtel Ltd. is a telecommunications company based in Ebene City, Mauritius. Launched on 29 May 1989 – Emtel Ltd became the first mobile telephony operator in the Southern Hemisphere. This took place under the aegis of The Currimjee Jeewanjee G ...

and MTML.

Films

Internet

has several operators like

, Nomad,

Mahanagar Telephone Mauritius Limited (MTML) Mahanagar Telephone Mauritius Limited (MTML) is a division of Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited which specialises in telecommunications and Internet services currently operational in Mauritius. MTML was founded in 2003 as a division of Maha ...

. Each operator uses a different technology to provide Internet access. Nomad makes use of

WiMAX Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) is a family of wireless broadband communication standards based on the IEEE 802.16 set of standards, which provide physical layer (PHY) and media access control (MAC) options. The WiMAX ...

, MTML uses

CDMA2000 CDMA2000 (also known as C2K or IMT Multi‑Carrier (IMT‑MC)) is a family of 3G mobile technology standards for sending voice, data, and signaling data between mobile phones and cell sites. It is developed by 3GPP2 as a backwards-compatible ...

and Emtel uses

HSDPA High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) is an amalgamation of two mobile protocols—High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) and High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA)—that extends and improves the performance of existing 3G mobile telecommunicat ...

(3.5G). The monopoly is retained by

(MT) which provides dial-up &

ADSL Asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) is a type of digital subscriber line (DSL) technology, a data communications technology that enables faster data transmission over copper telephone lines than a conventional voiceband modem can provide. ...

services over existing telephone lines. High-quality internet access is also widely available in Mauritius; Ebène Cyber Tower, in

Ebène CyberCity Ebene () is a suburb of Quatre Bornes, Mauritius, south of the capital, Port Louis. Construction began in November 2001, with the suburb being promoted as a new information technology hub for Mauritius and as a link between African and Asian ma ...

, hosts the

AfriNIC AFRINIC (African Network Information Centre) is the regional Internet registry (RIR) for Africa. Its headquarters are in Ebene, Mauritius. Before AFRINIC was formed, IP addresses (IPv6 and IPv4) for Africa were distributed by the Asia-Pacific Ne ...

, the internet registry for Africa.

References

Bibliography

* (Includes broadcasting)

External links

* Mauitius

{{Mauritius-stub