To Telstra chief executive Andy Penn's credit, the market opportunity is definitely there. When Fairfax Media visited earlier this year on a three-week fact-finding tour, the need for better services was clear. Both Globe and PLDT offered wide coverage for low prices but this is largely limited to phone and text message services. Smartphone struggle Filipinos cannot order a Uber car service because their smartphones struggle to get data connections in crowded places. If you have a device with Google Maps, the GPS unit will easily find you. But this is useless because it cannot download a map without the internet, making your position a blip of blue amidst a sea of grey blurs.

Local teachers on one island have to rise at 5am to download resources; waiting another hour means facing unusable speeds as waking villagers switch on their phones. And while the vast majority of Filipinos currently use prepaid services and communicate via text messages, many expressed a willingness to pay more on contracts if it meant getting decent internet connections. Telstra was due to invest up to $US1 billion ($1.3 billion) to buy 40 per cent of the joint venture – the most allowed under foreign ownership laws in the Philippines. The partnership with San Miguel would then borrow billions more from local banks to fund construction, which analysts have priced at up to $US3.5 billion over four years. When combined with the mobile spectrum held by San Miguel, this would have created one of the fastest broadband services the Philippines has ever seen – potentially even faster than what Australians currently receive.

The obstacles Two obvious hurdles for Telstra were the existing service providers, Globe and PLDT. But the biggest threats were those that companies such as Telstra struggle to factor into their risk/reward matrixes. Globe chief executive Ernest Chu and other local telco executives spoke of their plans for fighting Telstra – techniques that would make an Australian Competition and Consumer commissioner's head explode. Stores that rely on the foot traffic and income generated by selling Globe and PLDT SIM cards would be banned if they dared to stock San Miguel's telco products.

Cell tower sites and backhaul would be locked up for use, preventing any sharing of resources – district governments lobbied against letting the new players in. Court battles would rage throughout the land in an effort to stop San Miguel from using its spectrum assets, without which the broadband taps would cease to flow. PLDT had already begun lobbying the nation's president to forcibly redistribute the electronic resource and both incumbents were preparing for a price war. Corruption widespread And finally there's the elephant in the room – the widespread corruption in the Philippines. Doing business on the archipelago is certainly getting better. But corruption remains a constant problem that has reached the highest levels of government.

Ironically, one of the biggest scandals in recent years involved the construction of a national broadband network in 2008 and accusations of interference by the husband of the country's then-president Gloria Arroyo. About15,000 protesters took to the streets in Makati City – not far from Telstra's Manila headquarters. Telstra's last taste of working with corrupt businesses took place when it acquired a Chinese tech company named Octave Group that turned out to be a beneficiary of bribes paid to China Mobile officials by the previous owner. Telstra never knew of the bribes and paid no kickbacks so revenue promptly fell off a cliff – $302 million was eventually written off. There's no question that the phone and internet giant must find new avenues for profit growth.

Focusing on less sexy deals involving the acquisition of business-facing companies may well be the safer path forward. But the fact that shareholders have pushed Telstra shares 2.33 per cent higher after the failure to finalise this opportunity shows that many were sceptical of the joint venture. So when Mr Penn and his team look back at what may have been they should not assume the road less taken would have led to success.