A lively phone discussion is set to take place this week between the Premier of Tasmania and the federal Communications Minister, with Lara Giddings accusing Malcolm Turnbull of bailing on a pre-election NBN promise.

The Coalition went into September’s election with a promise to honour all NBN roll-out projects which were already in progress or had in-depth planning in place, now they say they will conduct a second review of some sites to re-assess their viability – likely with a view to not completing the roll-out.

Tasmanian Premier Lara Giddings says many voters banked on the promise, and this week she will make sure it is kept. Labor’s communications spokesperson Anthony Albanese has joined in the criticism of the Communications minister, saying reneging will mean 85,000 Tasmanian homes miss out on the high-speed internet they are owed.

“It looks like they will back down from what is a first-class rollout of optic fibre in this state.”

“It is critical and it must not be wound back,” Premier Giddings said

Malcolm Turnbull says he could not do anything, even if he wanted to.

“There's nothing we could do to slow down the rollout in Tasmania because it has been dead stopped,” Mr Turnbull said

“The contractor has basically stopped work for several months.”

Mr Turnbull says the current scheduled completion date is now: “totally unachievable and the further that this thing sinks backwards the harder it will be to get contractors to work for them.”

Digital Tasmania’s spokesperson Andrew Conner pointed to the contractors’ concerns as well, saying “in the last couple of weeks there were stories about Aurora refusing to connect additional fibre optic cables to their poles, citing wind loading concerns, and they've had 10 years experience putting fibre optic cables in their poles.”