For nearly a fortnight, Jaycar on Berry Street has been running without a landline or internet during the business’ transition to the National Broadband Network. 

“I’m losing business,” Jaycar owner Ruhul Ahsan said.

“My customers are going somewhere else, and it gives me a bad reputation.

“You can’t get your reputation back.

“It is a big headache, we are so dependent on the telephone and internet.”

Without a fixed line network, Jaycar can’t sell prepaid phone credit, and the eftpos machine doesn’t work.

Mr Ahsan has bought a “costly” eftpos machine that connects via the 3G network.

The whole business is running off his personal hotspot, and Mr Ahsan suspects his data charges will be exorbitant.

The cause of the outage remains a mystery to Mr Ahsan.

He’s also in the dark as to when the problem will be resolved.

Last Tuesday, Mr Ahsan was on the phone to the NBN for three hours.

“They can’t explain what’s going on whenever you ring, they keep changing you from one department to another,” he said.

The internet was down for five days in late May.

In that case, the NBN told him it would be fixed in two days.

“I had no issue with the copper line,” he said.

“It’s very annoying, we were told we had to get the NBN, and now I’ve been without internet for nearly two weeks.

“Even one day without internet is a big issue.”

Mr Ahsan said the issue has been widespread; another Nowra shop lost service for two weeks in transition to the NBN.