[rpd] Some thoughts, and some actions required

[Andrew Alston]

Owen,

And there in lies my exact point.  I cannot see how we can have a policy that is a one way policy that only allows inbound transfers, because I don’t believe the rest of the world will accept such a thing.  At the same time, I know we will need space that only exists off the continent and will need to be transferred in from other RIR’s.  Everyone is so worried about space leaving the continent on mass, but we are forgetting, once we have exhausted what is in the AFRINIC pool, Africa will have the least amount of space of anywhere in the world.  Why on earth would people come and try and BUY space on the secondary market in Africa?  There is almost none to sell and its going to be far easier and probably far cheaper to convince companies elsewhere in the world to sell purely because of the volume of space available elsewhere.  However, we also have hundreds of millions of people not yet connected and because of the very low rates of space on the continent, it is us that will have probably the greatest need for space.

As I said, we if we extrapolate from the allocation rates of November, December and January combined we were allocating at in excess of 3 /8s a year, and to my knowledge (and I’m open to correction here), no other RIR ever hit those kinds of levels.

Rejecting a transfer policy right now in my view would be like a man who has a canteen of water as he starts a venture into the desert, and says to the guys with a water truck, just incase you decide you want a sip of my canteen and I run out, I want a rule that says you can never fill up my canteen so its clear you can’t have any of my water.  Guess what, after a short while the guy with the canteen will run dry, and he will die of thirst.  The guys with the water truck may end up rationing but they will survive.

Are we as an African community really going to be that short sighted?

Andrew


From: Owen DeLong <owen at delong.com<mailto:owen at delong.com>>
Date: Thursday, 4 February 2016 at 10:56 PM
To: Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston at liquidtelecom.com<mailto:Andrew.Alston at liquidtelecom.com>>
Cc: serge ilunga <sergekbk at gmail.com<mailto:sergekbk at gmail.com>>, Sander Steffann <sander at steffann.nl<mailto:sander at steffann.nl>>, Sunday Folayan <sfolayan at gmail.com<mailto:sfolayan at gmail.com>>, rpd <rpd at afrinic.net<mailto:rpd at afrinic.net>>
Subject: Re: [rpd] Some thoughts, and some actions required

Let me be blunt, I’ve already started trying to figure out just how much space I may need to get on the secondary market post exhaustion, for planning purposes.  If I’m right, there simply isn’t enough of it in Africa to accomplish this.  I am VIOLENTLY opposed to African companies selling to outside entities, but I am also a realist and believe we may well end up having to buy from outside entities.

I doubt you will be able to permit the latter without allowing the former.

Owen


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