It would be fair to say the announcement of the NBN caught many - including those in the industry - by surprise. But, two years on, there's still little doubt the announcement and subsequent efforts to set up a wholesale-only, open-access government enterprise in NBN Co had one specific purpose: Deconstructing Telstra.

"There was no interest from Telstra to cooperate with the government," says telecommunications analyst, Paul Budde. "In that sort of situation, it was a unified sigh of relief that the government did stick to its guns - that we have to have a structural separation, a national infrastructure, and NBN Mark II in place."

Those guns were aimed squarely at the incumbent monopoly telco, according to Telsyte analyst Chris Coughlan. The timing of the NBN announcement - Telstra head honcho, Sol Trujillo, had only announced his departure from the company a month earlier - was fortuitous: It provided the government with the ammunition it needed to restructure Australian telecommunications.

The $11 billion financial heads of agreement signed last year by Telstra, NBN Co and the Federal Government solidified that goal. Rather than the government having to enact legislation that forced a Telstra separation, the previously reticent company was now willing to play ball.

"In my discussions with David Thodey, it became clear to me that he definitely was a person of the new age rather than the old age," Budde says, attributing the decision - yet to be finalised - to the customer-focused CEO who replaced Trujillo. "But there was always that doubt: Can one person, like David Thodey, pull it through?"