"Many countries are looking at Australia and are saying 'Gee, I wish we could do that'," he said. "Nobody can be definitive about when you hit the wall, but the wall is approaching and you can see it. Every developed country is going through this and because of the commercial context, the incumbent telco, with probably the exception of Verizon in the US, hasn't got a business case for rolling out broadly fibre to the premise other than in restricted coverage to particular market segments in particular cities."

"We are not building this so everyone can have an iPad," he added "We are doing this so that we can restructure the deliver of health services, education, and science."

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In early 2009, a seven member panel of experts - including Coutts - knocked back all bids in a tender process for the original NBN plan of fibre-to-the-node because none were viable. The NBN Implementation study goes some way to validating this decision, Coutts said.

"Essentially to go down the FTTN road would mean something in the order of, greater than 50 per cent of the capital being put into digital cabinets in the suburbs," he said. "They then become an obstacle to the final solution... fibre-to-the-premise. Fibre-to-the-node was not a stepping stone to fibre-to-the-premise. In fact, if anything it would put it backwards. The second reason, of course, is in no other market have people proceeded with fibre-to-the-node other than an incumbent. It is a solution that is the right solution for an incumbent that has a copper infrastructure."