Mr Windsor accused Mr Joyce of “leaving his constituents behind” as the network is yet to be seen in Tamworth, despite the city being “fibre-to-the-premise” ready when he vacated the seat in 2013.

But Mr Joyce has hosed down lack of transparency claims, stressing that fibre to the node will be delivered to the city in the first quarter of next year.

It comes as Tamworth businesses back calls for the immediate rollout of the network to counter lagging internet connections.

“It’s time for Mr Joyce to show some fibre and step up to explain to the people of the New England electorate where the rollout of the NBN is at and why it has stalled,” Mr Windsor said.

“We know Mr Abbott and Mr Joyce had the view during the hung parliament that the NBN would only be useful for downloading movies, but most Australians would disagree.

“If we are to be part of the innovative, agile and smart world that our Prime Minister speaks about, the global communicator NBN has to be a major component.”

This comes just days after Mr Windsor labelled the timing of the AFP raids on former communications minister Stephen Conroy and political staffers’ homes as “suspicious” as the government works to “convince people that their claims about their NBN are better than the original”.

Mr Windsor called on Mr Joyce to clarify his position on arrangements put in place during the hung parliament, where all users in Australia using fibre to the home or fixed wireless would enjoy parity pricing with their city cousins.

“Why has there been silence on this issue of parity of pricing and what is the National Party’s arrangement for future pricing?

"It’s time for Mr Joyce to come out from around ‘the table’ that he sits at and deliver a first-world telecommunications network to the people of the New England and other country areas, rather than keeping them in the dark and falling further behind the rest of the Australia.”

Mr Joyce hit back at claims of the  project stalling under the new government, saying the number of New England properties able to connect to the NBN had almost tripled since the 2013 election.

“There seems to be this idea that there is some kind of clandestine plot and we have changed our delivery structure for the NBN. We are not, it is so open. It’s in the first quarter of 2017 – fibre to the node in Tamworth,” he said.

In October 2015, NBN released its three-year rollout plan, which forecast about 39,900 homes and businesses in New England – 19,100 of those in Tamworth – would be either ready for service or under construction by the end of September 2018.

Mr Joyce said it cost about $2300 to connect a property to the NBN under the Coalition roll-out, compared to Labor’s original network cost of about $4400.

“The Coalition has kept a wholesale price cap regardless of which NBN technology a user is connected to,” he said.

“It’s unsurprising that Mr Windsor is turning into a complaints desk. 

“What I can say is just compare it – one’s complaining, one is delivering.”