The legislation required to make Telstra's split into two units possible has been deferred till next year, after the authorities and the Senate ran out of time to debate the important and crucial changes to regulations which currently govern the country's telecommunications market.

As a result of the shortage of time, the Government will now have to wait until February 2010, as that is when the Parliament would resume this essential debate. The Senate's continuous talking over the contentious emission trading scheme took up all the time at the recent gathering, leaving the authorities no choice but to put off the debate.

The development comes as both a good and bad news for the Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, who had sent out a public appeal to pass the bill before Christmas, and before Telstra secured a deal with the Government to sell its copper telephone network to the state for integration into its $43 Billion national broadband network.

Had the bill been passed, Telstra would have been blocked from getting its hands on the wireless spectrum which it needs in order to smoothly advance its profitable Next G mobile broadband business, unless the company agreed to separate its retail and wholesale divisions voluntarily, or, alternatively, divest 50% of its share in Foxtel and its cable broadband network.

While the Government is planning to use the delay to further refine its terms and conditions about Telstra's involvement in the creation of a super fast countrywide broadband service, the company is relaxing for a while as the laws which will force it to split into 2 cannot be enforced yet.