Embattled Kim Dotcom launches Mega

 New Zealand-based entrepreneur Kim Dotcom today launched a new cloud storage service, Mega.Mega.co.nz launched at 6:48am today, 20 January, exactly a year on from the moment police raided Dotcom's mansion in Coatesville, 40 minutes outside of Auckland.At the time, Dotcom's Megaupload service, along with its sister services, were shut down and the domains seized by the FBI.Shortly after the Mega.co.nz launch, Dotcom tweeted about the surge of interest in the website."Wow. I have never seen anything like this. From 0 to 10 Gigabit bandwidth utilisation within 10 minutes," he said."100,000 registered users in less than one hour. Fastest growing startup in internet history?"The site was soon overloaded, and at the time of writing - four hours after Mega.co.nz's launch - was still down. User could access the website and sign up by using the https:// prefix instead of http://, but when PC World attempted to upload an image we were unsuccessful.The new service grants free users 50GB worth of storage space - higher than most cloud services, but still lower than the 200GB Megaupload offered before the domain was seized.There are also three paid plans available:

• Pro I - For ¬10 users get 500GB storage and 1TB bandwidth.
• Pro II - For ¬20 users get 2TB storage and 4TB bandwidth.
• Pro III - For ¬30 users get 4TB storage and 8TB bandwidth.

Dotcom is currently awaiting an extradition hearing which, if the Crown is successful, would see him extradited to the US on charges of copyright infringement, money laundering and racketeering.PC World New Zealand will be attending a launch event for Mega this evening, NZT - we'll have more details as the event unfolds.