Scott Moffat with his son during the renovation. Credit:Susan Bradfield Photography Optus failed to reconnect Moffat's home to Optus cable because NBN failed to reclassify Moffat's home as not ready for service — despite Optus' repeated requests to resolve the issue — according to an Optus spokesperson. Optus is unable to bypass cease sale regulations until NBN officially acknowledges that a home is not ready for service, the spokesperson says. "Optus has been advised by NBN that Mr Moffat's property was originally mis-classified as ready for service. If the property had been classified by NBN as unserviceable, Optus would have been able to offer Mr Moffat an HFC connection as an alternative to the NBN," Meanwhile NBN insists Moffat's house was always ready for service, but that efforts to identify and repair a fault in the street were mishandled. To reduce connection delays, NBN is no longer declaring homes ready for service in HFC cable areas unless they have an active lead-in from the cable in the street. "NBN regrets the delay in connecting the premises in question to the NBN network and for the inconvenience caused during the delay," an NBN spokesperson says. "An NBN technician was sent to the premises on June 30 and resolved the connection issue after identifying signal issues in the pit outside the premises.

"Unfortunately, additional technician appointments such as these are occasionally required in order to successfully connect a premises to the NBN network. We are currently activating around 33,000 services on the NBN network every week and with such large scale migrations these kinds of problems can occur." Caught in the middle of this situation, Moffat spent the last four months with no home phone or broadband service despite escalating complaints to Optus, NBN, the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman, the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, and communications minister Mitch Fifield. Despite this ongoing campaign, Moffat's services were only restored after Fairfax Media raised the issue with NBN in late June. After four months of inaction, the NBN network fault was rectified within 48 hours and Moffat's service was connected on June 30. "I felt completely abandoned and no-one seemed to care that I'd had no home phone or internet for months," Moffat says. "I was continually told by all parties that I had no option but to wait until NBN fixed the network in my street and I couldn't go back to Optus cable." Moffat's complaints to NBN "fell on deaf ears," he says, as NBN insisted that he go through his retail provider even though Optus had "completely disowned" him.

"Optus shunted me from customer case manager to case manager in what has to be the most appalling customer service I have ever received," Moffat says. "My last Optus senior case manager continued to ignore requests from both myself and the TIO to update us with our latest connection status, to the point where Optus did not contact us for three weeks." "Meanwhile the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman is the biggest toothless tiger I have ever dealt with, they simply sent emails and letters to Optus telling them to contact me, with no result." The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission told Moffat it could not assist him as an individual consumer. "The ACCC does not have the power to direct service providers to reinstate services in a particular case. Internet service providers are responsible for individual connections and specific queries should be directed to the relevant ISP," says an ACCC spokesperson. "The ACCC is working with industry to manage issues encountered during the migration of services to the NBN more generally. We have requested that NBN Co and ISPs develop new migration processes to assist in the migration of services to NBN Co's FTTB/N and HFC networks."

Meanwhile the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network, which lobbies for the rights of telecommunications consumers, is "very concerned" about reports of consumers being left in limbo. Loading "Switching to the NBN is supposed to improve consumers' broadband connectivity, not leave them without services for months on end. Leaving consumers disconnected for months is not good enough and unacceptable," says ACCAN senior policy adviser Rachel Thomas. "Consumers should not have to go to the media to get connection issues fixed. The industry as a whole needs to work better together to ensure the consumer gets and stays connected."