But in Australia, Budde claims, history is repeating itself.

"Again we are fast falling behind the rest of the world, as happened in the early days of broadband, then with Local Loop Unbundling and ADSL2+. This time we are making the exercise so complex that it could easily take a year to unravel that complexity; again we are the only country in the world making it so difficult for ourselves."

Nobody will be able to build an alternative network without the full cooperation of Telstra, and nothing will be achieved until the government acknowledges this and makes a policy decision to force Telstra to cooperate, he wrote.

"Without that we will continue to be trapped in the morass of delays, submissions, investigations, court cases etc."

Budde said Australia has had three times more government inquiries than the USA, while other countries constructing next-gen networks have had only one or two inquiries.

"At the latest count we have had over 10, and we still can't make a decision. And there are yet more inquiries underway."

The success of investment in new FttH networks in Europe and Asia, according to Budde, is because they are built on the principle of open networks and equivalence of services.

"There is not much the government can do, other than compel Telstra to come to the party, by giving the ACCC the power to enforce structural separation, which hopefully will be enough to get Telstra to the negotiating table," he said.

Telstra, on the other hand, is calling for the regulator to get out of the way in order to assist commercial certainty in the NBN tender process.