For those who don't know the story about the Australian internet industry, Telstra plays a pivotal and depressingly stupid role. Telstra was a government monop

For those who don't know the story about the Australian internet industry, Telstra plays a pivotal and depressingly stupid role. Telstra was a government monopoly in the past and owned + owns almost all the copper network in Australia. From 1997, Telstra was progressively privatized without separating the telecommunications business (phones) with the telecommunications infrastructure (cables). This was an idiotic idea. There were some regulations that forced the infrastructure to be offered wholesale to competitors but they're still the gateway that the majority of the population get onto the internet. It's also problematic as Telstra are doing worse and worse at maintaining the copper network that is relied upon. If you are an ISP using their network, you need to go through their maintenance fees to improve the line quality for any of your customers. The cost of wholesaling through the Telstra network is also fairly high. Regardless, we've got reasonable competition at the ADSL/ADSL2+ level thanks to this. Forward to the National Broadband Network (NBN), the government plan to connect the majority of Australian homes to fiber to the node (FTTP). Telstra submit the equivalent of a joke tender for the project -- 12 pages connecting only ~90% of the population when the tender requests 98% -- and then suffer their biggest one day stock fall in history when it's rejected. Construction of the NBN rolls on without them, promising to replace the copper network with a fiber network that will be the new telecommunications infrastructure used by the majority of ISPs. However... a new government came to power in Australia. One of their election falsehoods was that FTTP was too expensive and too slow and instead a ridiculous hodge podge (sorry: "hybrid") network of failing technologies would be preferred. Instead of building a complete FTTP network for $73 billion, they're instead going to spend $41 billion on a hybrid network that will need to be replaced only five years after completion according to the chairman of the NBN[1]. This hybrid network relies on the old copper network owned by Telstra. Telstra have previously stated that it is ready to die and will have billions of dollars of maintenance issues. This is also only a very brief discussion of the ridiculousness. tldr; Telstra played an important role in screwing up the previous generation of Australia's internet. Telstra is continuing to play an important role in screwing up the current generation. [1]: http://www.zdnet.com/its-time-for-turnbull-to-swallow-his-nbn-pride-7000024263/ http://www.zdnet.com/its-time-for-turnbull-to-swallow-his-nb...