Sitting around waiting for a technician to hook you up to the NBN? You’re not alone.

NBN Co has missed almost 160,000 appointments in the last financial year.

In response to a Senate Estimates question on notice, NBN Co revealed that twere 157,268 missed appointments in the last financial year, with nearly half of these taking place in the last three months.

According to the company behind the rollout of the National Broadband Network, a missed appointment “refers to where a technician did not attend the premises within the agreed appointment window, as per the service level schedule”. NBN Co did say that the connection or fault still may have been completed “within the relevant service levels”.

“While 91 percent of appointments were not missed, the total number of missed technician appointments for the period 1 July 2017 to 30 June 2018 was 157,268,” NBN Co said.

In a previous Senate Estimates question on notice, NBN Co said there had been about 80,000 missed appointments from June 2017 to February 2018, meaning there were nearly another 80,000 missed appointments in the last three months of the financial year.

Shadow communications minister Michelle Rowland slammed the government for the missed appointments.

“Consumers deserve better,” Rowland said. “Labor calls on NBN Co to act urgently to improve its processes and communication with end-users to reduce the number of missed appointments.”

Last year, the Opposition pledged to introduce an NBN Service Guarantee that would set the standards for fixing faults, installations and missed appointments.

“Less downtime, greater accountability and fewer missed appointments – that is what consumers deserve,” Rowland said.

Under a recent court-enforceable undertaking with the ACCC, NBN Co will have to pay $25 to retail service providers for every missed appointments, late connection or fault.

Due to the missed connections alone, the company would have been set back $4 million in the last financial year.

The agreement emerged from the competition watchdog’s ongoing inquiry into the NBN wholesale service standards which launched in late 2017.

The rebate will be paid to the telecommunications company, but the agreement includes a requirement that consumers receive some of the benefit.