 minimum transmission rate of 12 Mbps. This broadband policy came about after a number of failed attempts the government to induce the private sector to upgrade and further build a broadband tele- communications infrastructure. The current policy is shaped by the present needs of the country, required transmission rates and therefore telecommunications technology, cost and benefit issues, as well as the policy decisions made by the Australian government when it deregulated the telecommunications industry in the early 1990s. The birth of NBN can be considered an indirect, unplanned result of deregulation policies of the early 1990s and privatisation of Telstra as a single infrastructure and retail entity. If Telstra had been privatised as two independent entities, then the infrastructure entity could have provided capacity to all retailers, Telstra, Optus and others on an equal basis. Upgrading of this infrastructure would have been then carried out as a matter of course as technology and business circumstances changed, benefiting all retailers equally. There would have been no need for a public-owned infrastructure such as NBN Co. The current policy has NBN playing the role of national broadband infrastructure owner and operator, as shown in Figure 2.25. It provides the network over which all retail players, including Telstra, can provide service to subscribers on an equal footing. Figure 2.25 includes two layers of a broadband telecommunications ecosystem, infra- structure and retail. The model is a reflection of the recent development of the telecom- munications industry, and its evolution from mainly telephony to internet connectivity. We consider a further layer of content and service providers. Companies active at this layer provide an end-user with information and entertainment content as well as video conferencing, messaging, social network services, and SO on. As introduced in the Preface, the ecosystem may be drawn as in Figure 2.6. Each layer uses a number of specific technologies, has specific business