A1 built tails mostly at 64 and 2mbit to the first generation integrated modems. The backbone was otherwise built using Telecom Australia/Telstra's Metro Network product, which ran out of W.A. and was very unforgiving. Rackable modem product was complicated to run. The Cisco integrated device was nice, but it's s/w stack was immature (I also worked on this at connect IIRC)

There were often boundary issues around who talked to whom, who was an ISP, who wanted to be, who was an intermediary. Having a pair into an MDF was the least of the problems sometimes, I went to some meetings (I'd rather forget) about peering (financial settlement) issues. Ideally yes, you'd just plug stuff in and go. In reality, that wasn't how business worked.

Labtam had a /16 direct from IANA, (not through AUNIC) from their manufacturing days. Now, that would be worth $3.5m -At the time, it was a godsend but not enough. The company had been bought at a low point in Australian PCB manufacturing at a stock-sale floor price, by two "entrepreneurs" who may well have been good businessmen but didn't understand the Internet one bit. Maybe they understood it too well, I remember a screaming match at a pre-sales tech meetup where one of them floated heads-up 3D VRML shopping malls and when I said "not technically feasible yet" I was roundly pasted for being defeatist. I didn't last in that company long.