[rpd] Re: [members-discuss] Virtual Africa is the logical target for IP address colonists

[Kofi ansa akufo]

Hello All

It seems for some reason I have missed out on the mail-lists (both
members-discuss and rpd) discussions. Perhaps been blocked from the
lists due to criticism.

It is very obvious the internet will continue to dissolve geographical
barriers - which Africa is currently feeling the impact not just only
because of exhaustion of IPv4 in other regions but the huge submarine
connectivity and carrier capacity on the continent. A country like
Ghana is fed by a minimum 5 submarine cables. This is driving retail
bandwidth costs down. In Kenya two exchange points are collaborating
with a european exchange point to build a robust architecture - which
will eventually blur the geographic division more. Talk about South
Africa, Egypt, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda etc. This will further get
worse when packet switching  networks and virtual architectures gain
much adoption.

What I am driving at is to stop drafting "Policies" that will stop
prospective business to get our internet resources but rather consider
policies that will enable the continent take advantage of the huge
backbone capacity to improve infrastructure and education. Policies
that will indirectly spark collaborations to address problems such as
NOT having enough, cheap and reliable POWER to make new emerging
businesses such as data centers to flourish in our region. Those are
the major consumers of internet resources in the other regions.

"What is the use of a father holding on to funds whilst his kids stay
at home not going to school - whilst he ignorantly keeps on telling
everyone he is saving for their future welfare" - AFRINIC's struggle
to remain as a "relevant"  not-for-profit organization will be in vain
if we dont adapt an open approach to collaborate to resolve the
issues. The organization even faces more challenges especially when it
is left at the mercy of few people who are not open to criticism and
seek to rather coverup issues rather than address them objectively.

IPv4 will inevitably be exhausted so the question is NOT WHAT but How
is AfriNIC trainings (especially IPv6) impacting on the adoption of
the larger address space by our community members. How many training
sessions have been conducted in the past 3 years and how many service
provider attendants at these sessions have moved on to deploy v6  on
their network? How many of the service providers and carriers who are
members of the community have deployed native v6? What are the
challenges they face - is it financial? is it technical?

We should stop hiding behind "you can force a horse to the river but
you cant force it to drink" and rush to develop POLICIES mindsets and
do objective assessments to adopt for better strategy to have an
impact. I believe the management structure needs to be reviewed right
from the top in the organisation - "heads must roll" - if necessary.

Cheers

K.


On 18 June 2014 22:58, Adiel Akplogan <adiel at afrinic.net> wrote:
> [I think that the discussion has taken a path which now need it to be moved to the rpd list]
>
> On Jun 18, 2014, at 17:13 PM, Douglas Onyango <ondouglas at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 18 June 2014 12:02, Adiel Akplogan <adiel at afrinic.net> wrote:
>>> In this discussion I don't think the real challenge is about organisations that already have a well established footprint in the region trying to expend their network out of Africa, but rather about how far an IP Analyst can go using his/her own judgment in cases where a company (new or not) recently decide to enter the IP service business/market and is requesting resources that will obviously be used in majority (up to 5%-90% as we already seen) outside of the region.
>>
>> I agree with the problem description. I have said the same thing in a
>> previous email and also mentioned that the policy I am drafting will
>> strike a balance between the two interests.
>
> Good to hear this.
>
> - a.
>
>
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