number of European countries who had to write-off assets (and minimise taxes) when they could not gain a return on their investment in acquiring frequency spectrum. Increasing competition in the mobile market. In hindsight, the decision of the Japanese government to increase competition through barring Docomo, KDDI and Vodafone from bidding for spectrum has been unsuccessful. As of 2014 there are only three operators in Japan: Docomo, KDDI and Vodafone - now Softbank who acquired them in 2006. DDI Pocket has ceased to be an independent entity, eAccess has been sold off, and the market has been consolidated. This demonstrates the limits of what a government can in fact achieve. Case Study 2.2: Australia's National Broadband Network Historically, telephone services in Australia were offered through the Postal organisation. The operation of domestic and international phone services was later transferred to two government commissions: the Australian Telecommunications Commission in 1975 (known as Telecom Australia), and the Overseas Telecommunications Commission in 1946 (known as OTC, where the author worked in 1988-90) [20]. Later on a separate entity was formed to operate domestic satellite services, known as AUSSAT. In the late 1980s and early 1990s the telecommunications operation was deregulated in order to increase competition, in line with general deregulation policies of the government. First in 1992, the two commissions were merged, named 'Telstra', and gradually privatised in three stages, T1-1997 (33% @ A$3.30/share yielding ~A$14B), T2-1999 (16% @ A$7.40/share yielding ~A$15B) and T3-2006 (34% @ A$3.60/share yielding ~A$16B). AUSSAT was sold in 1992 to Optus, a consortium of Australian and International com- panies, and competed with Telstra in the long-distance telephony market [21, 22]. Copper lines connecting homes to the domestic telephone network remained the property of privatised Telstra. However the privatisation act mandated that Telstra provide access on this network to all long-distance operato