If you think your local government is totally incompetent, compare it to ours:
When most Tasmanians hear the name Basslink, they automatically think of the electricity cable connecting our state to Victoria. Not many people realise however that along with this cable, a high bandwidth fibre optic cable was also laid from Tasmania to Victoria. A fibre optic cable or conduit was also laid alongside the 420km natural gas backbone pipeline spanning Tasmania.
The State Govenment has had these fibre optic cables at its disposal for upto 5 years that could connect all Tasmanian cities to the global Internet but has left them idle. These cables have been waiting to be switched on and connect to the rest of the world.
But they haven’t been, and it has cost Tasmanians dearly.
In 2003 the Tasmanian Government paid $23 million for fibre optic cables laid with the gas pipeline, dubbed TasGovNet.
Since then, the government allocated $7 million for further fibre optic work.
By 2021 a minimum of $30 million will have been paid for access to the fibre optic cable laid with the Basslink cable.
Which begs the $60 million dollar question: Why isn’t it working for Tasmanians yet?
Anybody know the answer to that one?
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