Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has foreshadowed an aggressive “daily” campaign against the Opposition if it uses its Senate majority to frustrate the government’s legislative agenda for broadband. He made the threat in an exclusive interview with CommsDay conducted at the conclusion of the APEC Telecommunications Ministers conference in Bangkok on Friday.

Commenting on industry criticisms over the tight timeframes for the National Broadband Network Request For Proposals, Conroy indicated that the government saw the greatest threat to its timeline coming from opposition threats to delay its broadband legislation—specifically that dealing with network information disclosure—currently referred to a Senate committee review process.

That information is required so that non-Telstra bidders can learn network configuration data about Telstra trunks and ducts necessary for the preparation of compliant proposals for the RFP process.

Conroy also deflected other criticisms of the process, such as the lack of certainty over the future regulatory regime, saying that the selection of the winning proposal and the development of a regime designed to ensure an open access regime “complemented” each other and that the guarantee of competitive outcomes did not require a slowing down of the process.

In the interview, conducted by CommsDay publisher Grahame Lynch, Conroy also welcomed the recognition by the APEC ministerial meet of several issues atop the Australian telecoms agenda including the need for a regional approach to online safety and infrastructure security. The meeting of 20 APEC telecom ministers issued a so-called Bangkok Declaration that emphasised regional co-operation on these issues.

Minister, you’ve conducted a number of bilateral meetings at this conference but I imagine the most interesting was your meeting with the Singapore minister, given they are also conducting a national broadband network tender process. What did you discuss with them?

Well the meeting was private but I guess the sentiment was that there’s been a lot of talk, now is the time to see the colour of people’s money. How many people will put in bids now after all the talking? I said that we are going through a process of a lot of talk as well. So there’s a lot in common with us, the structures of the industries are a little different and each nation has different challenges, but we’re trying to reach the same objective. Open access was a common theme across this conference from all the bilateral discussions as well as the floor of the conference. Here in Thailand they don’t even have a (WTO) services chapter. It’s a common challenge.

Related was the Bangkok Declaration’s goal of universal Internet access by 2010 and universal broadband access by 2015. That’s quite an audacious goal, was there any discussion of how this would be achieved?

It’s a very significant goal and ambitious. It’s a worthy goal and if you don’t start with an ambitious target you may not achieve (anything). There were strong arguments about making this technology-neutral and each country is proceeding in different ways. Some have no legacy networks while Japan talked about a WiMAX network they plan to establish even though they are well served by fibre already. Different countries have different terrains, structures, competition levels. Australia I think will be ahead of that and we will have achieved genuine (universal) broadband coverage by 2015. We will share our experiences and that was the useful thing here. We met with Singapore, Hong Kong, Canada, the United States, Thailand and the Philippines. Singapore were lamenting their economies of scale compared to Hong Kong, and I said “we’d love your economies of scale”! Even Singapore felt they had challenges of economies-of-scale and profitability in some areas. The Philippines has a dynamic guy who worked in Citibank and has just been appointed (ICT Commission head Anthony Roxas-Chua) and with so many populated islands his challenge is vastly different. We just have Tasmania and a few islands! His technology choices will be affected by that.

One of the big personal successes for you at this event was the headline recognition given to regional co-operation on online safety and security. Can you tell us what was discussed and decided?

We wanted to promote infrastructure safety, talking about the submarine cable exclusion zones in Australia and other countries were very interested in that. We also talked about the ability to co-operate across jurisdictions, the Internet is borderless and no jurisdiction can win a battle by itself. We talked about sharing information on Internet (website) blacklists… Australia has a blacklist and others have theirs. We welcome the expressions of interest in sharing blacklist information. On Cybersecurity we talked about our activities regarding Cyberstorm 2 and how we need to be engaged with other member economies. How can we assist each in terms of natural disasters? The Pacific Rim is a rim of fire. There are real challenges. We are encouraging others to combine on these projects, also in areas such as cyber terrorism. These are new challenges that didn’t exist ten years ago.

The Malaysian government says it will set up a regional cyber-terrorism centre in Cyberjaya. Did Australia pledge to support that?

We didn’t get a chance to meet with them bilaterally but we are getting in touch with them to see what they are doing and how we can support it.

Going back to Australia, on the NBN RFP there’s been some criticism of the tight timeframes and the current absence of information about Telstra’s network configuration that might affect the preparation of non-Telstra bids. Some people are saying it might be impossible to get a credible bid in.

We have one party demanding a shorter timeframe and $100m bonds (for entry) which could have led to the exclusion of other bidders. We’ve got another party saying the timeframe is too short and you should have structural separation as the beginning point of the discussions which would have possibly led to the exclusion of other bidders. This is a very robust sector and we have always acknowledged this is a tight timetable. We are committed to delivering Kevin Rudd’s and Labor’s election promises (on broadband) and they are an absolute priority. We are determined to get that information and we have a bill to get that information going through parliament. If Brendan Nelson and the Opposition don’t want to pass that bill then we will campaign every day to Australians. If we have to wait until the 1st of July (when the Coalition loses its Senate majority) then Australians will be waiting longer. We issue a challenge to the Opposition to pass that bill – this information is vital. The sooner the bill is passed, the sooner the information is provided. Despite reports that (some carriers) refused, nobody refused. The legislation is ultimately necessary to give protections about the future use of that information and so that people can comfortably give it to us. The challenge is there for Brendan Nelson and Bruce Billson. They didn’t have a comprehensive national (broadband) plan for 11 and a half years, although they had 18 plans!

The competitive carriers are concerned that the legislative and regulatory regime will be decided in parallel with this process and not before. Some of them seem to be quite nervous about their futures. Should they be?

Not at all. We have invited an open (discussion) on the regulatory framework. This notion that there is a gag around this issue? We have invited an open discussion so that not just those who are bidding have their say but a broad range of stakeholders have their say. We are very conscious around issues of stranding (competitor infrastructure) and we are interested in a sensible transition. Nothing has changed. There will be discussions on how we do that. You have seen the prices of DSLAMs falling, they’ve depreciated away faster than used to be the case, we will be working with existing providers to ensure people aren’t disadvantaged. The suggestion that we should slow the process of a national broadband network so we can provide some sort of guarantee (to competitors)? One does not exclude the other. They complement each other.

Some commentators are already beginning to write off the RFP describing it as a process that might need to be scrapped, delayed or revamped… Stuart Corner for example described it as a dead duck in his weekly newsletter this morning … are some of these criticisms justified or premature to your mind?

It is premature. We are still getting indications of interest in bidding. This sector likes to talk a good fight but, as my Singapore colleague said, let’s just see who puts the money on the table. We’re working hard to achieve a tight timetable and potentially this could be delayed by the Opposition blocking our bills.

Singapore has 11 pre-qualified potential bidders for its fibre tender and theirs is a small market. All things being equal do you anticipate similar levels of interest in Australia?

Our build is far more challenging than their build and that’s not taking anything away from them. Now is the time to see who steps up.

A final question. In recent years, Australia has become less visible in international telecom fora. At the ITU’s recent Global Symposium for Regulators there was just one Australian delegate but three from Nauru! There’s a decent sized delegation from Australia at this APEC Telmin event from industry as well as government, is this a sign of a reverse of the trend and that we might become more active in the global telecom policy agenda?

The Rudd government is very committed to APEC, we are committed to engaging. 70% of our trade is in this region and we will raise our profile. We will commit to more involvement and it was interesting that a number of ministers here acknowledged the role that Paul Keating has played in establishing APEC.

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