back to article Kim Dotcom offers free internet with own submarine cable

Kim Dotcom has told the world he wants to get into the submarine cable business. Dotcom’s plan is to revive a company called Pacific Fibre that, as we reported last August, wanted to build a USA-to-New Zealand cable, but sank for lack of funds. New Zealand has few submarine cables connections to the world, which keeps the …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Internet freedom funded by Arabs

    Yes, a sound plan. Oh, did I misspell that?

    1. tonysmith

      Re: Internet freedom funded by Arabs

      If the Americans can fund 'democracy' in Iraq why can't the Arabs fund 'freedom' in NZ?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "Anything the Americans do is a good idea"

        Glad to've cleared that up then. What does that have to do with this, again?

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Internet freedom funded by Arabs

        > If the Americans can fund 'democracy' in Iraq why can't the Arabs fund 'freedom' in NZ?

        You laugh; but there's at least a couple of Arab states that would fund this purely and simply to piss off the US. I can see this working...

  2. Chris SC
    Joke

    Isn't it about now he should announce he's buying Sealand and setting up his own country, or is it too early on the Antipodean Self-Important Fantasist time line?

    1. Rampant Spaniel

      I thought that after territorial waters were extended from 3 to 12 (nautical?) miles Sealand was no longer in international waters? I know there original basis for sovereignty was based on a court decision and a visit from an envoy but this was pre expansion. Personally I don't care one way or the other, but methinks that whilst Sealand wasn't up to much it was ignored and allowed to continue. If Kim were to buy it, move in, and start getting up to mischief (or at least upsetting people with money) there would be more motivation to test the legal standing of the 'principality'.

      1. Pete the not so great

        yes, but there was an allowance made for Sealand

  3. Anonymous C0ward
    Devil

    I will destroy the world

    with my laser!

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Forget the cable

    How about just buying an old Soviet Nuclear SUBMARINE.

    Then hold the cable holders to ransom.

    Bwaaahahaaaaaa

    1. Haku

      Re: Forget the cable

      That's probably on his list right after the sharks with frickin' lasers.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Mushroom

      Re: Submarine

      I don't think he'd do that because that would allow the U.S. to designate him as an 'armed combatant' and while I don't think we'd declare war on him...I wouldn't put it past us.

      1. nexsphil

        Re: Submarine

        Us?

        You have about as much say as Sauron's minions in policy creation.

        1. Fred Flintstone Gold badge

          Ssssssssshh..

          .. don't destroy that illusion of democracy..

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Pirate

    Say what you like about Mr DotCom...

    ...but he appears to have massive, titanium-plated testicles.

    1. Ken Starks

      Re: Say what you like about Mr DotCom...

      If he pulls this off, he will be guarded better than the Crown Jewels.

  6. DaLo
    Black Helicopters

    Extradition?

    Making himself too valuable as an asset for the NZ government to extradite maybe?

    1. Shades
      Thumb Up

      Re: Extradition?

      That was my first thought.

    2. Jerome Fryer
      FAIL

      Would require extraordinary legal contortions

      Extradition would be tricky, since they have royally f*cked up the initial arrest (illegal arrest, illegal search and seizure, illegal transfer of his property to the FBI, and on and on...). Also a few wee errors on the part of the local internal spooks have surfaced, in terms of illegally spying on him. (Can't spy on legal residents without some "national security" nonsense, that they didn't have -- spooks claim to have been unaware of Dotcom's residency status so thought spying on German bloke was OK; well, how could the security establishment have feasibly managed to check such publicly available information? Make a phone call to the Department of Internal Affairs? F*ck those gummint' bureaucrats!)

      Depending on how much Dotcom's business ends up being assessed as worth, he may be able to simply buy his own submarine cable outright once the NZ taxpayer reimburses him for our government's addiction to Uncle Sam's dong...

      Come to think of it, he should just buy a political party then buy himself into government.

      I for one welcome our potential hefty German submarine cable-owning overlord... etc.

  7. wowfood

    Free Internet

    Lots of countries talk about it, to this date I don't think any have actually done anything about it. Hopefully NZ does get it, because then other countries might need to pull their fingers out and do something similar. Who cares if the free broadband is only 256Mb if it's free.

    Although what are the bets he's doing this because it'll make his datacenter for the new MEGA company cheaper to run.

    1. M Gale

      Re: Only 256Mb

      Only?

  8. pctechxp

    History repeats itself

    The cable might be free once its laid but its unlikely that providers in the the US will give him free rack space, power and peering and transit.

    Arab investors may fund it for a time (as for the moment they have little else to spend their caverns of cash on) but they certainly aren't stupid and are unlikely to fund it forever if it doesn't make a return.

    Here in the UK plenty have tried to make free Internet (or free after an initial fee) work as a business model, all were shortlived after telcos withdraw support after usage outstripped estimates by an order of magnitude.

    Anyone remember RedHotAnt or LibertySurf?

    1. cosymart
      Facepalm

      Re: History repeats itself

      Why would he need free anything? If he is paying $$$ for a submarine cable to be laid, connecting to the infrastructure would be peanuts in comparison.

  9. sueme2
    Happy

    Been done.

    Remember Korea and how one man got the telecoms? I think KDC is just at a loose end.

  10. Poor Coco

    Here’s the plan!

    He offers free broadband “for ll Kiwi’s[sic]”, so once his offer comes to fruition I, as a New Zealand citizen, will accept. Of course, I will need the broadband at my house in Montréal.

  11. andro

    money talks

    money talks in most the world. a lot of people want to support him. there is little to no trust in the us everywhere. KDC bought his way in to NZ with an agreement to invest, and if he has the content that people want at me.ga and builds the cable, and keeps the data in NZ, he will be in a pretty strong position.

    The NZ courts seem to be offering him a lot more than the american ones. Building the cable will be massively expensive, but if he can do it, then the second time around I reckon NZ would be likely to protect him like they should have in the first place (I dont think they saw this coming). Also, Australia is real close by, and has a lot of fibre, so even if he cant cross the planet a nice fall back plan would be an NZ to Sydney pipe (2153kms or 1338 miles), at which point he could peer with southern cross networks...

  12. andro
    Flame

    actually

    I may have missed one major detail.. half of the southern cross cable network allready runs straight through new zealand. So its not true that NZ has limited connectivity, and not true that KDC would need to build a leg back to sydney. In this case, its just another regular business venture, and if he did it I reckon he'd be crazy not to expand and try to carry a lot of australias bandwidth too.

    http://www.southerncrosscables.com/home/network/overviewandmap

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Apostrophes

    Actually Mr Dotcom has not one but two incorrect apostrophes in that short quote.

    Then again, Simon, all of the articles you produce have syntactically invalid sentences, with this one as no exception.

    Why didn't you just include a [sic] and be done with it?

  14. The elephant in the room

    I'm guessing he's funding it with Japanese war gold

    what with the laying cables to Pacific islands & the encrypted data hosting, Mr Dotcom seems to have stepped out of the pages of Cryptonomicon (Googling the two I'm not suprised to see I'm far from the first to see a similarity here).

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Kim Dot should have closed the screendoor on his submarine

    He's about to be found at the bottom of the sea.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Actually

    It's fairly cheap to land bandwidth into New Zealand.

    Otoh it's bloody expensive (5-14 times the landed cost) to get it shipped anywhere else in the country.

    There's (still) a nice cosy duopoly at work in NZ and they're not above paying backhanders to ministers to keep things that way (even if they've been "forced" to unbundle local loop - accepting that doesn't mean they lost control of backbone paths, etc)

  17. Adam White

    I "plan" to re-launch the Saturn V

    It's going to be mega! Free moon rides for all!

  18. Tom Reg

    New Zealand broadband at home is expensive - almost as bad as Canada!

    New Zealand

    Broadband 250GB $61.00NZ == 31 UKP

    Canada

    Bell 250GB per month $82 CDN == 51 UKP

    In Canada they rarely have to bring the internet over 100 miles from the USA.

    Something is wrong here in my country.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: New Zealand broadband at home is expensive - almost as bad as Canada!

      "Broadband 250GB $61.00NZ == 31 UKP"

      This is simply not true. For $75NZ you get 30GB, for $85 ~60GB and in the last few months one ISP started offering "unlimited" for $100. Those data caps were half as much a year ago for the same price. I'm also betting you have far better broadband coverage than NZ.

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like