On the surface it might sound like a policy success, but Turnbull's decision effectively hands the reins of his NBN policy back to the one company whose influence Labor and the entire industry have long understood needs to be attenuated, not increased. Turnbull went to the election believing that Telstra would give the government its copper access network (CAN) and that this would happen through slight adjustments to the $11 billion Telstra Definitive Agreement that Labor negotiated. A year later, the negotiations continue and there is no sign that NBN Co's ultimate goal - the ownership of Telstra's CAN, which chairman Ziggy Switkowski foreshadowed earlier this year - is imminent or even achievable. Now that Telstra knows the government will pay it handsomely to rent its network in perpetuity, the monopolist-turned-capitalist has absolutely zero incentive to sell. The thing is: without guaranteed access to the CAN, Turnbull's fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) dream is nothing more than a pallid thought bubble.