MANY forget the NBN is not just a broadband internet service but will also be the only way we can make home phone calls.

Unfortunately some are already complaining that this “fancy modern technology” doesn’t match up to what they had before.

Western Australia resident Geoff Levings lives in the southern Perth suburb of Waikiki and has been less than impressed with his home phone service.

His home is connected to the NBN via Fibre-To-The-Node technology that uses copper wire and fibre optic cable to provide internet services. Because he is located 1053 metres from his nearest node, the maximum internet speed he will be able to achieve is 25 megabits per second.

While he would prefer faster internet, it’s actually his home phone service that’s giving him the biggest headache at the moment.

Mr Levings said the internet phone service was extremely unreliable.

“The service will often drop out mid conversation,” he told news.com.au.

“I talk to my wife three to four times a day and quite often the thing just stops, you don’t get any warning.”

Because the majority of the copper network is being ripped out to make way for the NBN, households will be forced to use Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) to make phone calls.

This means if the internet drops out, so does the phone call, and this happens with annoying frequency.

Mr Levings said calls just stopped, quite often after the conversation has been going for about 20 minutes.

Callers trying to get through often get an engaged tone, so it’s not clear the line isn’t working.

“Residential VOIP services are at best unreliable, at worst almost completely useless,” he said.

At times calls drop out after the internet disconnects, which it does once or twice a day.

A couple of times, Mr Levings saw the internet was still working but it was just the VOIP that stopped.

A spokesman for NBN said there was no reason why a VOIP service should not operate as well as a public switched telephone network service.

“But this really does depend on how well the retail service provider sets up its network to deliver the service,” he said.

Mr Levings’s problems are being investigated Barefoot Telecom, the retailer that is delivering his NBN, but he is worried that it will continue to be an issue.

“People need to be aware that if they lose power, they have no telephone unless they have battery backup,” Mr Levings said.

“They have taken Australians and given them all this fancy modern technology, the politicians are telling everyone how fantastic it is, when in reality it’s far worse than what people have now where telephones are concerned.”

He was especially concerned because home phones were a lifeline for people like his 86-year-old mum.

“It’s going to leave people completely confused,” he said.

“My mum doesn’t have a mobile phone and has got reliance on this stuff. All of a sudden it won’t be there and I think people need to be aware.”

While the old phone system wasn’t perfect, Mr Levings said calls could still be made if there was no power.

“Now if there is a national disaster and the power goes out and mobile is not working, we’re all going to be in la la land for however long.”

charis.chang@news.com.au