if Australia & New Zealand decided it was a national priority and approached it with an infrastructural rather than profit-oriented basis
The current conservative government in Australia has decided that internet is a luxury, not a nation-building project, and scuttled the NBN, a project intended to provide infrastructural improvement to the 'tubes. It ain't going to be a 'national priority' here any time soon.
Which is weird, because business benefits from fast tubes a lot more than consumers do, and usually the conservatives are the pro-business politicians.