The chief executive of Telstra, Australia's dominant telecommunications carrier, has criticised the government over repeated delays to a A$4.7bn (US$4bn) national broadband network contract, claiming the absence of the service was robbing the economy each year of A$2.4bn worth of gross domestic product.

Sol Trujillo, the Telstra chief who has locked horns with successive Australian governments, said: "By my calculation that's a A$200m loss for every month of delay. That is pretty powerful to me."