Albury Council economic development director Tracey Squire has used her submission to the federal’s government’s inquiry into the NBN rollout to alert the committee that residents had been left without a solution.

“Issues relate to the design of the service, specifically the length of the copper line between the NBN fibre node and the customer premises being outside the design specification,” she said. “The customer will likely receive less than designed minimum line speeds, service drop outs or reliability issues.”

Customers were informed they could not access the NBN “until further notice”.

Ms Squire said new NBN services in areas already declared as “commenced” also were waiting up to 12 months to get connected.

“This arrangement is far from satisfactory and is unduly impacting business operations in what must be an unintended consequence of the legislation,” Ms Squire said.

An NBN spokeswoman said the distance of homes from the network meant additional work was required and they “are investigating a range of options to connect these premises to the NBN network as soon as we can”.

Elderly people who relied on landline-based medical alarms were also put at risk because the NBN had to “quarantine” their phone number for six to eight weeks.

Anne Bittner, a 74-year-old woman living at a Wangaratta retirement village, said alarm suppliers were sympathetic, but could not retrieve landline numbers – they could only switch the service to mobile phones.

“The medical alarm was the real cause for concern,” she said.

“At a meeting of village residents, which was addressed by a Telstra/NBN representative who had no idea about medical alarms and did not clarify the process involved in changing over, it became clear to me that older people with only landlines didn't want the NBN (or) understand it was mandatory.”

A public hearing of the inquiry will be held at The Cube in Wodonga on April 20.