[will_hughes]

Telstra is the current product of a hundred years of monopolistic government owned telco.

They were forced into competition through providing wholesale access to the copper network in various formats, but they've retained ownership of the CAN.

Basically no matter who you get your landline or DSL services through, it's going over a bit of Telstra owned copper at some point.

Things are changing somewhat with the NBN rollout, but not necessarily for the better.