Telstra's Tasmanian monopoly to be broken by Basslink

Stuart Corner
Monday, 10 November 2008 11:10

Business IT - Networking

The long-awaited promise of competitive backhaul links between Tasmania and mainland Australia will soon be realised with Aurora Energy and Basslink both set to offer wholesale services into Melbourne over fibre laid with the Basslink power cable that runs across Bass Strait.

The cost of backhaul has been a sore point with Tasmanians for years: ISPs have shied away from entering the retail market, claiming backhaul costs charged by Telstra are far to high to enable them to compete.

Aurora Energy and Basslink have signed a contract under which they will both deliver wholesale broadband services to Tasmania using Basslink's fibre, Aurora fibre in Tasmania and Tasmanian Government fibre managed by Aurora.

The Government owns a fibre network that run from George Town to Launceston, south to Hobart and across the North-West to Port Latta. It was installed along with a gas distribution laid by Duke Energy in 2001 and 2002. the Tasmanian Government announced last December that Aurora had been selected as its strategic partner to commercialise this network.

Basslink and Aurora say they have a detailed implementation program over the next few months. The optical fibre links are expected to be provisioned and operational early next year, and commercial services are expected to commence in the first half of next year.

Basslink CEO, Malcolm Eccles, told iTWire: "We are still in final negotiations with our chosen vendors. We will probably announce that in the next couple of weeks. And we hope we might be able to offers services in the first quarter."

Basslink and Aurora are confident that competition introduced on the route will generate competitive backhaul prices, and see the cost of broadband services continuing to decline as the market becomes more competitive.
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