Can a wireless future save us from a regulatory schemozzle?

The regulatory stand-off that Australia currently finds itself in on national broadband infrastructure investment is, ironically, to a large extent the unintended consequence of Telstra's very effective lobbying in the mid-1990s to move telecommunications from a regime of industry-specific regulation to one of general competition law. This was timed to coincide with the legislation needed in 1997 to support the foreshadowed change from a duopoly fixed network market (with 'triopoly' mobile networks) to open-ended competition in the provision of most network-based services.