Four-sevenths of the city received fibre to the premises (FttP) under the faster but more expensive early rollout under Labor.

The remainder of houses were provided with fibre to the node (FttN) after the Coalition came to power and switched technologies.

Businessman and former Dubbo mayor Mathew Dickerson wants the government to revert to the earlier FttP technology.

But if there was no going back and retro-fitting, he suggested a “standard fixed fee” that did not run into a four-figure sum to allow people to upgrade.

He understands NBN Co allows people to switch, but “our experience has been it’s a very clumsy, convoluted process with no guarantee of success and with price tags of thousands of dollars”.

“And I think it’s incredibly unfair that someone on one side of the street gets it for free and someone across the road they get it for thousands of dollars,” he said.

“Maybe if there was a standard fixed fee to upgrade… they could do that and let those consumers make that decision.”

Mr Dickerson contests there is a “digital divide” between areas of the city that have FttP and those that have FttN.

“So that digital divide is apparent now, but as people start to take up more and more services, then someone who watches movies via a streaming service and are about to move house, they will not want to be in a FttN area, and more so once we get to the stage where we get to gigabit connections,” he said.

On Monday Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull insisted one complaint about the NBN was one too many and vowed to address consumer concerns about the service.

NBN  local spokeswoman for NSW Lynette Keep said nbn [NBN Co] was designing the network to ensure all Australians, including those at Dubbo, had access to fast broadband as quickly and efficiently as possible.

“nbn is using a range of technologies to make fast broadband available to all Australians by 2020 and there are several  factors that determine which technology is chosen for each area,” she said.

“nbn was mandated by the government to provide a minimum wholesale speed of 25/5Mbps to every premise in Australia by utilising a multi-technology mix; and all technologies have a planned upgrade path.”