Marc Ferri has owned Friends Pizza Restaurant on the Princes Highway at Figtree for seven years.

In early December he decided to get the NBN connected and was looking to get it sorted out before Christmas.

Mr Ferri contacted Telstra to start the ball rolling – and on December 7 began what he has described as “a traumatic 10 weeks”.

“I hadn’t heard from them and I walked in on the seventh and my internet was down,” Mr Ferri said.

“I didn’t worry about that, it happens. But then I picked up my phone and the line was dead, and that was it.

“Trying to trade that night was hard.”

Mr Ferri said the phone line had been switched off without notice and remained like that for several days.

“I had customers walking in that night going, ‘Marc why don’t you answer your phone?’,” he said.

“The bugger of a thing was when they disconnected the phone it was still ringing on the other end. If you rang me it made a ringing sound even though it was a dead line.”

Mr Ferri estimated he lost at least $1000 in trade due to the disconnection.

He said Telstra connected the phone to a second line but that had issues too, and his internet would regularly drop out.

Mr Ferri claimed the phone and internet issues continued until earlier this month when the NBN was finally connected.

To keep the business running, Mr Ferri turned to social media to let people know why it seemed he wasn't answering his phone.

He said the response from his customers was quite understanding – “it’s such a lovely community here”.

But he is still looking to get some compensation from Telstra.

A Telstra spokeswoman did not respond to questions about offering compensation.

The spokeswoman said Mr Ferri was provided with an interim service while it waited for the connection to be completed.

“We wish to apologise to Mr Ferri for the difficulties he experienced moving his services to NBN,” the spokeswoman said.

“We have worked with NBN to resolve the issue and the service was connected earlier this month.”