Michelle Rowland visited Orange earlier this week to speak to Labor Party faithful and some of the 17,000 homeowners who had access to the National Broaband Network (NBN) in the city.

She said many of the issues faced by NBN users were “systemic” and pointed to the “buck passing” between service providers and NBNCo.

Ms Rowland said under the USO, Telstra had to provide fixed line phone services but she wanted to see the guarantee redesigned to better fit residents communications needs.

She cited a productivity commission report which called for flexibility for residents to get a custom built solution to serve their needs.

“Maybe instead of Telstra being the universal service provider, a farmer could be allocated a voucher and they could put up a really good satellite dish and enter into an arrangement with a mobile carrier for example.

“It would also avoid this situation we have now with the mobile black spots program which has become really heavily politicised.”

Ms Rowland said she would rather use the public funds spent on eliminating black spots to be used by people in those areas to support their own “bespoke” communications service.

She said the USO had been operating for 20 years but was rapidly becoming obsolete as new technology changed the way people are working.

“We’ve got to have something that’s fit for purpose.”