Tasmania's Basslink data and power cable cut (on purpose) but fix not until May

Cable ship the Ile de Re has made its first cut to the Basslink electrical cable, and residents of the Australian state of Tasmanians have been plunged back to the era when only one telco (Australia's dominant player Telstra) provided Internet backhaul to the mainland.

As a result, Taswegian broadband subscribers to Telstra's competitors are throwing fits at what they're describing as an Internet brownout, with even NBN subscribers complaining that they're barely able to achieve 1 Mbps download speeds.

With the cable now cut – and likely out of commission until May – Telstra is now the only game in town, and while backhaul prices from Tasmania are capped by a service declaration from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, it seems TPG is unwilling to buy as much from Telstra as it had been buying from Basslink.

Digital Tasmania said after the first 24 hours without Basslink, capacity was strained no matter what access network the consumer was trying to use.

Tasmania's minister for technology and innovation Michael Ferguson has urged Telstra's competitors to buy more backhaul from Telstra.

Ferguson notes that wholesale prices are capped by ACCC service declarations.

Internode has posted this explanation to its customers. The company says Telstra Wholesale has committed to configuring extra bandwidth for iiNet/Internode customers by Thursday March 17, after which it will contact customers regarding rebates.

What caused the Basslink electrical and data cable failure isn't yet known but it's becoming a political storm in the state.

When the cable was built, the state government expected most of the time it would be helping Hydro Tasmania export the state's green power to the mainland.

Now, according to The Mercury, Basslink is accusing Hydro Tasmania of exceeding the cable's safe operating parameters, because the lucrative trade selling green power to the mainland was irresistible.

The cable's owner (a company called Cityspring) has already been in dispute with Hydro Tasmania, accusing it of loading the cable so hard in 2012 (more than 80 GWh per week was sent to Victoria, the Mercury reports) that it caused repeated outages. ®