My understanding is that they were going to go ahead based upon...

My understanding is that they were going to go ahead based upon a smaller footprint and 5g which would allow them to get to the much more centralised population groups. I think it was quoted that you could reach 80% at a huge saving but for anyone travelling you want to be able to use your phone on that trip. The problem is that what is the benefit for one of the majors to assist you to expand your reach into these areas if it allows you to attack their very lucrative market so in fact if 5G was going to be the mainstay of this service it was always going to be far too expensive to roll out a new national service. The ACCC is dreaming if it thinks that I would use TPG as my mobile service if it was inferior to the big 2 - I don't even use Vodafone because its coverage seemed inferior. I like to travel and in Tasmania, it was Telstra or Optus.

Unless you have TPG and Vodafone as the third leg neither will be a strong competitor individually as I see it. Nor do I think that it's in the consumers' interests for the ACCC to be forcing a company to compete even if the economics don't make sense. In any event, I reckon that both parties will white label each other's service if this fails, with the spectrum company being jointly owned - not the best solution but neither will make money trying to establish 4 Networks in mobile and broadband services.

Really it is blackmail and coercion that the ACCC was and is playing here. Not a good look in my opinion. Certainly, the NBN has, in my opinion, destroyed TPG shareholder value and you can probably add a few other listed companies (Vocus springs to mind ) to that list as well.