The veteran, Ted Doss, was among the first allied troops to enter Hiroshima after the atom bomb 75 years ago, and has a radiation burn on his left shin which needs regular attention.

He has an electronic pendant which registers if he has a fall, connecting through to an emergency medical service.

This "medi-line" works satisfactorily, but he needs to be able to contact other health services by phone and has not been able to use his landline for the past six days.

Mr Doss's daughter Carol recently saw to it that her father had a mobile service installed as a backup, but mobile reception in the Wallendbeen district is unreliable, with signals intermittently being unavailable or dropping out.

"We've called them on the mobile and they've told us it's a fault in the Cootamundra exchange," Mr Doss said.

"Each time we call they say, 'oh, it'll be fixed by 5 o'clock this afternoon', but they've been saying this for days now.

"I've even had people telling me I don't know how to use the phone properly, it's insulting," he said.

Telstra has made no public announcement to people in the district about its service failure.

When the Herald contacted the Telstra customer help line, we were told technicians expect the service to be restored before 7pm tomorrow, Thursday September 10.

However the help line was unable to say why it should take a week to repair the fault, or whether the fault in the exchange had affected any other areas.

Customers can obtain a refund for the week of non-service by calling the Telstra help line on 132200 and asking for "billing".