MegaUpload founder Kim Dotcom is hoping to revive a two year old undersea broadband cable project that stalled out earlier this year due to insufficient funding. Pacific Fibre intended to lay 6,500 miles worth of cable between Australia, New Zealand and the United States.
Dotcom recently took to Twitter to voice his opinion on the project. It was here that he said it is important to reboot the project and that he will make it happen. He also reached out to Pacific Fibre chairman Sam Morgan and director Rod Drury, suggesting the three get together to discuss it further.
The entrepreneur has said that New Zealand ISPs would have free access to the cable. This would drastically reduce how much residents pay for their Internet connection, perhaps by as much as 80 percent. Speeds would be three to five times faster and there would be no transfer limits.
It seems that most in the media, however, believe Dotcom's ambitions are little more than a pipe dream at this point. It would reportedly cost in the neighborhood of $330 million to complete the project. Dotcom would use his new file sharing site Mega to help fund the project in addition to other investors and perhaps even money raised from suing authorities for closing down MegaUpload.
The United States would also have to approve the cable on their end. Given Dotcom's pending extradition hearing scheduled for March 2013 and the fact that the cable would feed into Los Angeles (a hotbed for Hollywood film production), that's unlike to ever happen.