In a list of the top 10 suburbs for complaints by postcode during the period from January to March, Newcastle featured second, Warners Bay third and Belmont North fourth. Toukley topped the list and Wyong was 10th. 

The statistics came as no surprise to Charlton MP Pat Conroy, who spoke in federal parliament last month about widespread problems with the regional rollout of the National Broadband Network (NBN). 

“It’s clear to me that the NBN rollout cannot continue like this. There are too many problems, and when you’re talking about telephone and internet these are essential services,” he said.

Disconnection complaints have also featured prominently among emails received from more than 70 Newcastle Herald readers who responded to a recent call for feedback on the NBN. 

Among them were Telstra customers Corey and Rochelle Loveday, from Edgeworth, who waited six weeks without a landline for their NBN connection to take place and received a patchy internet service with frequent buffering issues.

Gavin Fry, of Maryville, was disconnected for six weeks while the NBN Co and his provider iPrimus deliberated over his internet hook-up, and spent more than $300 on his mobile phone in the interim. 

Blow-outs in waiting times have also affected many people wanting to connect to the NBN. BP proprietor Rizwan Rana has been waiting 10 weeks for an NBN connection through Telstra, whileTim Snell, managing director of Carrington firm Industrial Monitoring and Control, was hooked up to the NBN only last week after signing on to a business plan with Exetel in January. 

Michael Newham, of Ashtonfield can only muster 9.5 megabits (MB) of download speed on his 100MB Dodo plan, despite having fibre-to-the-premises technology, and Mark Godfrey, of Thornton, complained that his suburb, which has very poor internet service, is not due for NBN connection until at least 2018. 

More complaints are logged on the interactive map below.

NBN Co issued an apology last week to customers in the Hunter who had encountered problems connecting to the NBN. The Hunter has been one of the first areas to receive the fibre-to-the-node rollout, accounting for 27,000 of the 57,000 connections nationally, and Chief Customer Officer John Simon conceded it had borne the brunt of teething problems .

Mr Simon said NBN Co, in collaboration with retail service providers, had implemented a new regime to despatch a technician to a disconnection site within 24 hours, regardless of whether it was a provider or NBN problem.

Mr Conroy has written to the Australia Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) requesting that it investigate issues associated with rollout and the response of internet service providers. 

 “There simply has to be more regulatory oversight,” he said.

“I’ve raised these issues the ACCC and I’m pleased that there has been some response from NBN but there’s more work to do.

“Service providers need to take a lot of the responsibility and work to address their issues as well because so far they have been unhelpful at best and downright exploitative at worst.

“This is not about complaining or scoring political points, this is about a genuine need to resolve the issues with the NBN. Everyone involved has to learn from the Hunter and Central Coast experience.”