Optus entered the ADSL2 market at the end of March on the back of its A$150 million (US$112 million) rollout of ADSL2 hardware, which has so far reached 100 metropolitan telephone exchanges. Over the next 12 months, this will extend to 340 exchanges and cover 2.9 million households, Optus said.

The ADSL2 broadband network will offer speeds of up to 20Mbps. Although 340 exchanges may seem paltry in comparison to Telstra's available exchanges and even iiNet and Internode's potential exchange capabilities, Kranenburg said comparing numbers was trivial.

"You can hit the largest proportion of the Australian public with 450 exchanges so one shouldn't underestimate the coverage you could get with 300 plus exchanges," he said. Despite current ADSL2 offerings with comparable speeds from iiNet and Internode since December last year, Kranenburg believes that mass national acceptance of ADSL2 would not be achieved until a national player entered the market.

"iiNnet and Internode have done a great job in seeding the market with the ADSL2 service but the reality is that those two companies are not market movers," he said. "If you want real market momentum into ADSL2, you need a national player such as Optus or Telstra.

"Telecommunications analyst, Paul Budde, agreed with Kranenburg's sentiments but added that Optus only commands a 10 per cent share in the current market as the DSLAM market has given equal market power to companies such as iiNET and iPrimus ."Optus still has to cannibalize some of its 'old' business, while for most of the others it is all new business," he said.