As noted at http://www.afrol.com/articles/29955 late last month (July 23, 2008) and in L'Express newspaper , the government of Mauritius has decided to adopt Summer Time (as it's known in Europe, aka daylight saving time) in the island nation of over 1 million. According to the announcements we've seen, the country will begin recognizing Summer Time in October of this year.
We suggest that customers and partners use Central European Time (CET) which in Windows appears as (GMT+1 Brussels, Copenhagen, Madrid, Paris) for Mauritius. This time zone matches to the DST rules being adopted by Mauritius and it matches the governments stated intent of being "aligned with that in Europe and the United States of America."
[Updated 081808: We are revising the guidance here due to an error in our analysis.]
We will post guidance to inform customers that they may use 'Abu Dhabi, Muscat' for Mauritius, and then on Oct 26, set their clocks manually ahead an hour as a work around, as we recommended for Argentina . We are considering options for how we will address the change in Mauritius in our December 2008 DST & Time Zone update. At present, Windows won't update the time zone currently in place by adding the name of this country. Official information will be posted to the Microsoft DST & TZ Site , specifically on the DST Hot Topics and Latest News page .
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We will issue more formal alerts on this news item this month as we have done for other countries that made late-breaking changes. Note that other DST and time zone changes, the decision in Mauritius may impact customers doing business in and with the affected region.
As noted previously (and included on our Hot Topics site ), Microsoft will continue to adhere to the published release cadence and issue the next update to DST rules and time zones in the December release. We will provide updates on the Microsoft DST & Time Zone site , issue appropriate HPPs, and work with the subs to provide localized guidance based upon the work done for Argentina. We should start on this effort now to allow customers enough time and information to ensure that they make the appropriate plans for their orgs.
More details cross-posted in this advisory post: 'Daylight saving time coming to an island nation near you: Mauritius changes in ... .'
Tags: Microsoft , Daylight Saving Time , Daylight Savings Time , RSS , DST , Mauritius .