Senator Conroy Scalds Vodafone CEO

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has attacked Vodafone’s CEO for questioning government policy, comparing him to Telstra’s divisive former CEO Sol Trujillo.Vodafone CEO Bill Morrow called for a review of the subsidies paid to Telstra to maintain their fixed line services in regional areas. Speaking at an event in Canberra on Thursday, Senator Conroy took the opportunity to criticise Vodafone:

“Despite advances in mobile phones, they [Vodafone] don’t want to provide services in regional Australia,” Senator Conroy reportedly said.

“I find it extraordinary that the world’s largest mobile operator wants to close down a regional network for people they don’t service. They lost 750,000 customers due to poor service and they want to lecture to everybody, they want to cut those people off. They are doing a good enough job of that themselves.”

The Australian Financial Review reports Senator Conroy’s office did not deny saying “we haven’t seen another telco CEO act like this since Sol Trujilo.”

In an opinion piece written for The Australian Financial Review Morrow claimed the fixed line subsidies should be reviewed as they are less relevant than mobiles.

“Over the past 10 years telecommunications companies have paid more than $660 million to a universal service scheme that subsidises the fixed-line phone network because the fixed phone was viewed as an essential service,” he wrote.

“As mobile becomes the more versatile and preferred service, we should revisit this fixed-line-focused policy.”

Not surprisingly, Optus endorsed the criticism.

Shadow Communications and Broadband Minister Malcolm Turnbull accused Senator Conroy of bullying on Friday saying he was trying “to intimidate people into not criticising government policy.”