Technology

Kim Dotcom Announces 400 Million Dollar Plan to Provide New Zealand With Free Internet

The raid on the Megaupload headquarters earlier this year seems to have awakened the rebel spirit within Kim Dotcom, Megaupload’s infamous founder.

Contributing Author

Published on

November 5, 2012

The raid on the Megaupload headquarters earlier this year seems to have awakened the rebel spirit within Kim Dotcom, Megaupload’s infamous founder.

Since his release from jail he has made repeat promises to put “the dinosaur record industry out of business for good” and has announced the release of a website that will provide free music while paying the artists at the same time.

Now he’s taken his radical activism a step further and proposed a 400 million dollar plan that could provide free broadband to everyone in New Zealand.

Unfortunately, there is a small roadblock in his way, that being the government regulation and cartelization of internet service providers, which works the same in almost every country.

Thanks to the way that the laws are set up, Dotcom is not legally allowed to provide people with internet directly.

Instead he is forced to go through the ISP middlemen who have special government granted privileges to sell and distribute internet services.

According to the NZ Herald:

“Kim Dotcom is proposing free broadband to all New Zealanders as he tries to resurrect the ill-fated Pacific Fibre cable connecting New Zealand to the United States.

Dotcom last night revealed his ambitious plans to build the $400m cable – which would double New Zealand’s bandwidth – set up his new Mega company, creating jobs and a data centre to service the rest of the world.

He would provide New Zealand internet service providers such as Telecom and Vodafone with free access for individual customers and charge a fee to business and central government.”

Pacific Fibre hoped to build a 12,950km cable between Auckland, Sydney and Los Angeles but cancelled the project in August after failing to raise the funds that were needed.

So even though Dotcom plans to resurrect this project and run a 400 million dollar cable under the ocean, it is illegal for him to give away the fruits of his labor to anyone without going through a licensed ISP first.

To no one’s surprise the ISP’s won’t just give away internet for free, even if they don’t have to pay for it.

Instead of giving up on the plan Dotcom has reluctantly discussed deals with the countries ISP’s and has come to somewhat of a compromise.

Dotcom will provide the ISP’s with the internet for free, who then have agreed to give the average people of New Zealand access to this connection for a very small fee.

To make the usage fee even lower for the average person, Dotcom is insisting that government and corporate organizations pay an extra surcharge.

Unfortunately, thanks to the cartelization of internet services which is made possible by government regulation, people in New Zealand will still have to pay for the service.

However, considering that New Zealand is in desperate need of this project and people would see a drastic decline on their internet bill, Dotcom’s proposal is being taken very seriously.

In the end people would pay roughly one-fifth of what they are paying now and the bandwidth would be three to five times faster with no transfer limits.

Dotcom commented on the project saying that:

“You have clean and cheap energy here. Power is becoming the biggest cost factor for data centres around the world.

With its own cable, cheap power and connectivity New Zealand could attract foreign internet business. Unfortunately the current Government wants to invest into more tarmac roads. In 10-15 years most people will work and shop from home. You don’t need tarmac, you need fibre!”

Although Dotcom is wealthy due to his internet entrepreneurship, a vast majority of this money will be coming from silent investors.

He said that he expects to get his share of the money from suing Hollywood and the US government, but if that falls through he still has no problem forking over his share out of his own pocket.

Dotcom has also been fighting back legally, accusing the record industry of lobbying the government for his arrest, illegal spying and wiretapping and other charges of police misconduct.

In New Zealand Prime Minister John Key and the Inspector-General of Security and Intelligence, Justice Paul Neazor, have both acknowledged the illegal spying.

As of now Dotcom is awaiting his extradition hearing in March.

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