Many long years ago, we had the PMG (PostMaster-General's) Department, a Federal Government department tasked with the delivery of post and telecommunications to all Australians. This was split into Australia Post and Telecom, however they were still Government owned and controlled.

Over time, Telecom became Telstra Corporation, retail competition was added (initially Optus, now we have several main competitors), broadband arrived and became popular in Australia, and Telstra was sold off.

Due to the size of our country, along with the massive time-frame and expense, it is not efficient or realistic to have multiple companies providing infrastructure services, but it is far more intelligent, cost effective and timely to have a single company provide the infrastructure and wholesale it to ALL retailers at an equivalent rate.

Whilst Telstra was required (before its selloff) and forced (after selloff) to provide its retail competitors with wholesale services, some of those competitors did install their own infrastructure in some locations, and even today we have three (3) separate mobile telephone networks (and their network coverage is not equal).

Even with some competitors installing their own broadband infrastructure in the exchanges, it was not deemed appropriate to have them also run separate cables to all premises. You can image the time, costs and public inconvenience of attempting to dig up all the streets and front yards to lay additional sets of copper cables to each home, and Telstra was required to wholesale the physical copper services to each premises.

However, there is a lot of evidence that Telstra was not competing fairly and honestly, and whilst giving lip-service that it was providing wholesale access, it in fact attempted to stifle competition by:

• Denying competitors space in exchanges to install equipment;
• Denying competitors space on the distribution frame/s to connect their equipment;
• Severely limiting competitors access to the exchanges;
• Charging wholesale customers the same (or more) for a service than what Telstra retail was providing that same service to the end-customer;
• and so on.

Whilst one option was to truly "Structurally Separate" Telstra, this was never actioned.

The alternative was to establish a separate "infrastructure" provider, who all retails (including Telstra) would purchase their services from, with ALL retailers on an equal footing.

Additionally, with the explosion in broadband across the country and the unbalanced delivery of broadband services by ALL providers (including Telstra), the NBN was created to provide near universal equivalent access to telephone and broadband facilities to ALL Australians across the country.

Please note that the NBN as conceived is NOT what is currently being installed, as it has become a political football.