[caf]

At the end of the day there was only one set of local loop copper going out to each residence. So no matter how many pieces it had been broken up into, each household was still going to face a monopoly owner of the last mile infrastructure to their residence.

[skissane]

They could have split retail from wholesale. So the wholesale company would have owned the local loop, but consumers couldn't directly buy from them, they'd be able to choose between retail resellers. Which is basically the current NBN model anyway.