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I disagree with you.
The market drove speeds forward in a way that was limited by the technology on hand, real fixed line speeds had stagnated for most of a decade and the only fix for that would have been for Telstra to spend billions, only to have the ACCC step in and regulate the prices they could charge for access. NO commercial carrier would spend billions on a network only to have wholesale access to it by "Competitors" mandated at regulated prices. Prior to regulation, Telstra was the wholesale provider and largest retailer and gouged it's competitors higher wholesale prices for ADSL than it's own retail prices.
You can (And obviously adamantly do) consider the NBN to be an act of political expediency by Rudd. No other course of action would have broken the chokehold Telstra had on the market.
The creation of the NBN or some other variant of the same concept (A monopoly, wholesale only infrastructure owner) was needed to fix decades of broken federal communications policy where the almost entirely monopoly infrastructure owner (Telstra) was also the biggest retailer and had it's wholesale arm set prices to it's competitors that were higher than it's retail prices.
Fixed line network provision is a natural monopoly, communications or power or gas for that matter, what idiot would create a privatised communications industry where the near monopoly infrastructure provider was also the largest retail player? (Hint, it was the Howard government who failed to separate Telstra into a retail and network company and sell them off separately)
Do you really think "The market" would have fixed the squelchy manure mess that the telco space was? After two decades Telstra was still mopping up something like 70% of the revenue and over 90% of the profit of the entire segment. Unless a competitor spent somewhere up to millions to install a DSLAM to deliver ADSL2+ services in an exchange Telstra would not enable ADSL2+ in that exchange so the idea of people can pay more if they want more speed falls on its nose too. You could not buy ADSL2+ in an area unless there were enough consumers that a carrier other than Telstra reckoned they could make a profit and so installed a DSLAM. Only then would Telstra "Compete" with them by providing higher speeds that they could have provided at any time they chose to do so, but ADSL was good enough unless someone was in a position to take market share off them. If the "Competitor" retailed services bought wholesale from Telstra rather than building a DSLAM, even after the ACCC stepped in they had to pay all their fixed costs and provide tech support, manage billing and all the rest on a margin of about $5 a month, the rest of your $60 or so going straight to Telstra. I know, I used to work for one of the "Competitors" who stopped retailing Telstra wholesale DSL services as it is a hiding to nothing to sell something where you get the blame for all the problems and your biggest retail competitor makes more money out of your customer than you do.
As to the "Genius design strategy" of the NBN. Well, I am suffering congestion on a fixed wireless service and still getting speeds nearly an order of magnitude higher than I had before. And it is cheaper too. A very large portion of the people complaining of slow speeds and high prices are with a couple of the big telcos which will remain nameless. Suffice to say that they are notorious for high prices and poor speeds through skimping on backhaul and NBN bandwith. You can't blame the NBN for either of those except for a broken pricing model (Which the current government insist on keeping) that makes bandwidth relatively expensive. My provider seems to be able and willing to buy enough backhaul bandwidth and CVC to provide proper speeds and still make money. If people don't like the service they are getting from the big three or the price they are paying, why don't they churn? Isn't that what this competition thing is all about?
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