A major communications outage has struck Tasmania, disrupting internet and phone services, with cable cuts to the mainland being investigated as the cause.

Telstra said on Tuesday afternoon its mobile and home broadband services had been disrupted as “a result of two separate cable cuts on the main routes” to the island state.

The company said on Twitter it was working to get the issue fixed as soon as possible. It said some voice calls might still be getting through, including triple-zero calls, which were not impacted.

Tweet from @Telstra

 

A TPG Telecom spokeswoman said Vodafone, TPG and iiNet customers in Tasmania had also been affected.

“Mobile, home broadband and NBN customers across our brands in Tasmania are currently experiencing connectivity issues due to the two third party cable issues,” the spokeswoman said.

“Customers may have limited or no service at this time.”

She said triple-zero calls would divert to another network, if available, and warned call wait times to TPG contact centres were higher than usual.

Earlier on Tuesday, electricity distributor TasNetworks said it was experiencing a “major statewide internet outage” caused by “upstream provider issues”.

In an update on Facebook just before 2.30pm, TasNetworks said services were progressively being restored across the state.

“Some connectivity is back, but some ISPs are still down, so some customers will still not be able to access our external website,” it said.

Optus said Tasmania’s network was “currently impacted” in an alert on its website, with 5G mobile and internet coverage, as well as 4G internet coverage unavailable.

“Our network team is working to resolve a transmission issue impacting the OPTUS network in this area,” the alert said.

NBN Australia said in an update on Twitter the outage was impacting some of its services.

– AAP