[Community-Discuss] Spearheading Internet Development in Africa / Late commentary on fee discussion

[Douglas Onyango]

Hi Coenraad,
I admire your interest in bringing more ISPs on board, however, I have
a serious problem with your proposal to use financials to classify
members.

First, I think it places AFRINIC in a rather precarious situation.
Several members already have a problem with AFRINIC probing their
network design. How do you think they will receive probes on their
financials?

Second, this proposal places a direct financial burden on AFRINIC to
extend the assessment to financials. I suspect that to do this,
AFRINIC would have to either hire a fulltime resource with expertise
in accounting/finance or outsource to some other finance authority.
The total cost of implementing either one of these interventions will
most likely exceed the anticipated $100k you think AFRINIC will make
in the long term.

Third, some organizations, especially small one like the ones you wish
to represent, might not have audited financials – In fact some of them
may not even be incorporated. To ask them for audited financials would
be to inadvertently exclude them from being eligible for allocations.

The negative consequences of your proposal seem to outweigh the positives


On Fri, 28 Sep 2018 at 13:30, Coenraad Loubser <coenraad at zenzeleni.net> wrote:
>
> Dear AfriNIC community
>
> According to the ITU (2017) Africa has 739 million individuals without access to internet infrastructure.
>
> We write to you representing 70 individual community networks from 30 African countries, most whom are not yet AfriNIC members, but who each have part of the solution to making available access to these areas where there is very little formal economic activity and where no alternative options exist, and where the internet can play a vital enabling role.
>
> This letter has been under discussion during the past 4 months, and has been the subject of almost 100 messages on external community networks forums.
>
> There is a class of Internet Service Provider that is not recognized by AfriNIC. In order to allow us to draw in their resources to help building out the invaluable resource that is the internet, as part of the AfriNIC community, we would like to discuss a mutually beneficial proposal that will play a huge role in setting up the next generation of ISPs in Africa - and promote an excellent platform for ISP- and IPv6 training.
>
> We first contemplated proposing a definition for a Community Network or Non-Profit ISP, but having also worked with many small and competent ISPs, we recognize their challenges and the benefits that having them in this community can bring.
>
> We would therefore like to propose, in line with simplest change possible, the following additional amendment to the fee schedule that has been under discussion:
>
> 3.6.5 An entity with annual revenues less than USD 350 000 that is required to register as an LIR, such as a Wireless User Group, Community Network or ISP will qualify for an additional discount of 40%.
>
> Basic modelling shows that this can potentially require AfriNIC to give up up to $40k annually, but could yield a surplus in excess of $100k annually after a few years as these networks mature.
>
> Alternately, a profit based model, which has not been explored as thoroughly:
>
> 3.6.5 An entity with annual profits of less than USD 100 000 that is required to register as an LIR, such as a Wireless User Group, Community Network or ISP, will qualify for a discount of 75%.
>
> Regards
>
> --
> Coenraad Loubser
> Co Authored by Dr. Carlos Rey-Moreno
>
> Office: +27 (0)43 555 2028
> Mobile: +27 (0) 73 772 1223
> Skype: coenraad_loubser Twitter: @dagelf
>
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>
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-- 
Douglas Onyango, PRINCE 2, ITILv3
UG: +256 776 716 138