Australia`s incumbent telephone operator, Telstra, has cancelled its ambitious plans to build a fiber-optic broadband network spanning the small continent.

Telstra executive, Phil Burgess, defends the decision, saying that excessive regulations imposed by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) would have made the $4 billion deployment financially impossible.

Burgess said that there is very little chance of the plan being resurrected in the foreseeable future. “You never say never, but it’s dead and gone,” he said on a radio program yesterday.

Australia is already far behind the U.S., Canada, and most European countries in terms of broadband deployments; a situation that will likely continue so long as government authorities force publicly traded companies to abide by and unfair and unrealistic set of rules.

“We’re not going to allow our shareholders’ back pockets to be picked,” Burgess concluded, saying that if Telstra followed through with the plan, and met the ACCC demands, its profits could be severely impacted for years to come.