The Dotcom bubble has well and truly burst for our resident German-born hacker slash money launderer.
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Posted Wed 25 January 2012 @ 10:23 a.m. by Paul Brislen
While he resides at Her Majesty’s pleasure, and the wheels of international law enforcement turn on both Kim and Megaupload (et al), most of the discussion has centred around copyright infringement and whether Kim’s business is legit or just a front for something more sinister.
My first thought was that it goes to show you can indeed run a global business from New Zealand, even it does turn out to be shady. Clearly Kim wasn’t worried by distance to markets, cost of bandwidth or any of the other issues we regularly talk about.
And he’s doing it all from Coatesville which, even though it’s now part of the Auckland super city is still pretty remote and not exactly on the main trunk line. Looking at the Chorus website’s handy address checking tool, it turns out (after a minor detour when it wondered if I perhaps meant Coatesville, Illinois) that the area won’t be getting broadband under either UFB or RBI projects.
So how’s he doing it?
Sources tell me (OK, some guy on Twitter) that he had fibre laid all the way to the Chrisco mansion and that the RFP included some pretty sharp points around latency and international connectivity.
And, as a result, Coatseville School has gained access to the fibre well ahead of any government sponsored project. I'm yet to confirm that but I'll see if I can find anyone at the school to tell me one way or the other.
While he might be a ratbag and may indeed be engaged in nefarious purposes (although of course he's innocent until proven guilty and so far the evidence has yet to be presented in court), the up-side to all this is that yes you can run a high tech world class organisation from New Zealand, you don't have to be based in central CBD land to do it and there's a spin off for the locals that may well be a good thing. Oh and that a German millionaire with a penchant for playing Modern Warfare and the means to make it happen might just be good for a local school.
I quite like that.
Categories: Innovation | ISPs | Regulatory