Sydney has Equinix and Global Switch which are both completely carrier neutral and very good/high quality sites. But NZ, aside from Skytower, which isn't ideal for content (ie. lots of servers), doesn't have a clear central location in Auckland to build capacity and caching servers etc into and easily connect to enough people to make it viable.
Is this lack of focal point more of an issue?
Nope - I think lack of population and what I'm calling CDN Gravity is more of the issue. I don't think that NZ has the population or demand to pull the content here. I've been suggesting that we look at aligning ourselves closer to Australia and leverage on the large CDN gravity there. Having it 40ms away is better than having it 200ms away in the US. Even if we built an Equinix in Auckland, we wouldn't get enough take-up to make an appreciable difference. But having said that, we do not have a truly carrier neutral internet exchange in New Zealand, so maybe thats something to address as well. Pacific Fibre not building another link to the US.... don't care. Pacific Fibre not building the spur to AUS. That I'm more concerned about. That's where I think we'll be getting 90% of our content within the next few years anyway. Remember, we want to be considered an Internet suburb of Sydney, not an Internet suburb of Los Angeles. Regards, Dean