Telco analyst Paul Budde agreed with Broad's sentiments, arguing that the ICT sector as a whole needed to become "facilitators" of end-user applications and content, rather than developers and deployers.

"We are not content producers in the ICT industry," he said. "Applications will come from the Harvey Normans or the medical software people of this world, the teachers, because these are the people that make content.

"Trying to build up a proprietary FetchTV or T-Box system; these things are going out the window because we're unlocking and hacking devices. There is no way that you can build sustainable, long-term businesses based on proprietary systems anymore."

Service provider's increasing interest in Cloud computing and data hosting has bolstered investment in the data centre space, putting the telco sector on the same battleground as more traditional IT stalwarts IBM, EDS and HP. However, Budde said that while telcos could successfully compete in the infrastructure and middleware or connectivity layers, the applications themselves would require a third party.

"What Michael Malone and others I think are alluding to is that what they want to do is build up a customer base big enough to be of interest to retailers who want to reach the customers," he said. "If you want to harness the combined ICT elements - Cloud computing and the NBN (National Broadband Network) - then you obviously have to be attractive to companies like Harvey Norman, the banks, healthcare organisations who want to deliver services to the end-users.