In case you thought the NBN rollout was a clusterfuck of epic proportions caused by bad governmental policy and a lack of infrastructure, it isn’t at all.

According to NBN co-chief executive Bill Morrow, who spoke at a parliamentary hearing in Sydney yesterday afternoon, the issue is “gamers predominantly”.

Yup. Your Quake 2 addiction is slowing down the entire national broadband scheme.,

“While people are gaming it is a high bandwidth requirement that is a steady streaming process,” Mr Morrow said, with an absolutely straight face.

“This is where you can do things, to where you can traffic shape — where you say, ‘no, no, no, we can only offer you service when you’re not impacting somebody else’.”

While the blame is being tossed around, a spokesperson for Communications Minister Mitch Fifield said Labor had “grossly underestimated the demand for broadband services in regional and remote Australia” while in power.

“If we had stuck to Labor’s planned fixed wireless and satellite coverage, at least 200,000 homes and farms would have found themselves without any service at all connected.”

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