Exetel chief, John Linton, said he believed the Telstra-NBN Co agreement would have no impact on Exetel, nor any other communications provider, as far as he could see.
"The eventual replacement of Telstra by the NBN Co, assuming that happens, is several years away in any meaningful quantities and as can be seen from today's half yearly report, a great deal can happen to the Australian communications providers in that time," Linton said.
"The key question for us at the moment is how long Telstra will continue to try and 'win back' ADSL customers by spending very large amounts of shareholder money that butchers its own revenue and profit lines?"
Linton has previously commented on this theme , arguing that Telstra's attraction of some 600,000-plus residential ADSL customers from rivals was a Pyrrhic victory.
"Losing customers is always a bad thing but when the largest provider in any supply chain spends an amount of money greater than all of its competitor's (bar one or two) gross annual revenue to attack their customer bases then its an inevitable result," Linton wrote.
iiNet director of regulatory affairs, Steve Dalby, said the ISP was keen to see the "meat and bones" of the agreement, but there was still much to be done before a deal between NBN Co and Telstra was concrete.
"Speaking generally, we are very supportive of the structural changes which accompany the NBN project," Dalby told. "They are a long time coming and very welcome.
"NBN is not just about fibre and gigabits, it's about a much less constrained competitive environment, greater coverage and a national, publicly owned network infrastructure which will be more reliable, have higher performance and more utility than the present, privately owned and restrictive model."
With the , it was now time for the government to more clearly articulate how it would use the NBN to drive economic growth, Dalby said.
"I look forward to the development of a national ICT strategy to exploit this new infrastructure across all threads of the Australian economic fabric," he said. "It can't come soon enough for us."
Optus, Vocus and Internode have also been contacted for comment.