Telstra spokesman Stuart Gray admitted the 650,000-customer ISP would not attempt to re-rout Web traffic via satellite, a situation Monash University IT lecturer Stephen Giles said highlighted the nation's -particularly poor" degree of satellite coverage.
Giles said Australia was an -unattractive" coverage area for companies that run satellite operations. -That leaves (Telstra) with the small number of entry and exit points that are in place at the moment."
However, Gray said no amount of satellite coverage would encourage the ISP to consider that as an alternative mode of international Internet connection.
-Satellite just doesn't have the capacity of cable," he said. -All our future developments are with cable."
Telstra would redirect all international Web traffic via its undamaged -Eastern cable" until the damaged -Western cable" was repaired, he said.
The 37,000-kilometre SEA-ME-WE 3 Internet cable, that connects Australia to Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, was slashed at the bottom of the ocean near Singapore on Monday afternoon. The damage left Telstra's Bigpond network running at 30 percent its normal capacity, until traffic was switched over to the other cable. Gray said the ISP was currently running at around 75 percent its normal capacity.
Gray said the repair ship was expected to -set sail" on Thursday afternoon, and that repairs were expected to be completed early next week.
The cost of the job would be covered by the consortium of 90 international players that own the cable, Gray said. He would not estimate the cost of the repair, but said a similar repair in Australian waters had cost the consortium AU$200,000. Telstra's fiscal stake in the consortium was less than five percent, he said.
The spokesman said the single cable was coping -quite well" with traffic during off peak hours. However, -there has been some slowness during peak periods."
The ISP had not received any official complaints from customers who were denied access to the Web, Gray said.
