Monday-morning-quarterbacking is an unproductive pastime, but I don't think it was very close, on account of the Internet side having developed a bunch of useful (if a bit ramshackle) protocols and applications much faster than the ISO team, because the specs were freely available (not to mention written in a much more understandable manner). I still rue the day the IETF dropped the "distribution of this memo is unlimited" phrase from the RFC preambles. Yeah I understand that it originally had more to do with classification than general availability, but it described the ethos perfectly.
It's not all roses and we're paying for the freewheeling approach to this day in some cases, cf. email spam and BGP hijacking. But it gave results and provided unstoppable momentum.