[rpd] Competitions Tribunal Petition

Sat Dec 30 22:54:21 UTC 2017

Kofi,

You and I are in 100% agreement on this – and it is the promotion of the African agenda that I seek as do you.

I simply argue that stopping legitimate African entities that have invested hundreds of millions from getting the space they need to actually roll that infrastructure to the consumer is harmful to the African people, and actually does the external companies who are coming in with external resources they can buy from outside a huge favour.  It disadvantages the African company, and hence the African consumer.  I have raised this time and again at meeting after meeting over the soft landing policies – and the authors have *never* addressed this.

The reality is this – Let us say that a company like Cogent wanted to come to Africa and build a network here – and start offering services.  They are ARIN region based – they have access to the transfer market – they have a US network so they can use a portion of their space off continent – and they can buy in as much space on the secondary market as they like to facilitate numbering their hypothetical new network.

Now, lets look at the African company – it has an African presence – it uses AfriNIC has a registry – it invests 100 million dollars building infrastructure on the continent – fiber across borders – public wifi hotspots – FTTH – you name it – then it comes time to actually deploy this infrastructure to the people and start connecting consumers.  They are told – sorry – you can only have a /18 in 24 months.  Guess what – their infrastructure investment is null and avoid – because a /18 simply won’t cut it.  So – what does the African company do – either they take their operations – register off continent – and domicile in Europe – and start using RIPE – in which case you better believe once they get that right that money will be flowing off the continent at a rate of knots since they now have the option to push the money out – or – in the absence of any way to get resources – they close up shop and find something else to do.

If there was a full transfer policy – the implications of soft landing would not be so horrendous – but we do not have one – and a transfer policy inside Africa is meaningless – because there simply aren’t sellers around – trust me – I’ve looked.  All the internal transfer policy has done has allowed the poor who are drastically lacking resources – to sell what they do not have – it is pretty meaningless.  If the soft landing policy let individuals come back for space as they needed it with no limits as to how many times provided they could prove usage of the previous block and allowed a decent minimum block size (/16 minimum) – again no big deal – it would be ok – but it does not do that.  What it currently states is – you get a /18 and even if you can prove you have connected every single IP address with a customer in Africa – you may not continue to connect customers – you are out of luck – and so are the customers in the region you are operating in.

The policy penalizes the CONSUMER – it penalizes the AFRICAN INDIVIDUAL – it advantages the international company – and time after time after time myself and others have said this – and never have these things been addressed by the authors – yet still consensus is declared despite open and unaddressed issues.

If anyone really believed that a policy like this – which stops African companies from operating in Africa once they get to a certain size – would pass and not face resistance that would go as far as is necessary to allow those African companies to continue to grow and thrive to the benefit of the African consumer and the African economy – then I say that was incredibly naive and shows a total lack of understanding of the industry and of business reality.

Andrew

From: Kofi ANSA AKUFO <kofi.ansa at gmail.com>
Date: Saturday, 30 December 2017 at 15:32
To: Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston at liquidtelecom.com>
Cc: Kangamutima zabika Christophe <funga.roho at yandex.com>, rpd <rpd at afrinic.net>
Subject: Re: [rpd] Competitions Tribunal Petition

Andrew dont get me wrong.

I am not taking sides here and not referring to Liquid Telecom :)  ... maybe the other company :)

What I am saying is lets decouple the requirements of being an entity duly registered on the AFRICAN continent  to gain resources and rather focus on how to marry infrastructure and economic development in our region with allocation of our digital resources. That promotes the AFRICAN AGENDA without locking prospective entities outside our region from business development in our region.

Well thats my opinion.

cheers

On 30 December 2017 at 21:23, Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston at liquidtelecom.com<mailto:Andrew.Alston at liquidtelecom.com>> wrote:
Kofi,

I can explain why some of the large carriers register their space in centralized locations - though this does not hold for all.

Consolidation of resources saves money - because of the fee structure it is far far far cheaper to consolidate all the resources into a holding company and then sub assign down to their relevant African operational companies than to have each operational company hold their own resources.

It is no secret that Liquid holds most of its space in Mauritius - it’s in the Whois database afterall.

However - I challenge you to find space we are using off continent other than a few point to points or one or two /24s which were necessary to facilitate communications back to the continent.

What I find more bizarre is that one of the authors of this policy is the CEO of a company that has had space for 9 years and in those 9 years has never announced more than 25% of that space into the global routing table.

What I find even more bizarre is that one of the most vocal proponents of this policy works for an organization that holds a /12 (again out of Mauritius) but at the time of receiving that space had no enterprise business - it was a wholesale operation providing transit to those who had ASNs and space - how did they get that space? It is a mystery to me.

Go through and look at those who support this policy vs those that don’t - look at their ip holdings - look at their ip utilization levels - look at the industries that employ them - You may find some very interesting statistics if you do some homework

Andrew

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________________________________
From: Kofi ANSA AKUFO <kofi.ansa at gmail.com<mailto:kofi.ansa at gmail.com>>
Sent: Saturday, December 30, 2017 3:11:21 PM
To: Kangamutima zabika Christophe
Cc: Andrew Alston; rpd
Subject: Re: [rpd] Competitions Tribunal Petition

Hi Kangamutima

Come to think of it. with the exception of a few well established Telcos in the region you would be amazed that most of the LIRs holding /15 to /8 are not rooted in delivering services in African region.

Well we the so called Africans are selfish, ignorant and lack the balls of carving our own path and stringent policies to drag along development in the region. The questions we the so called Africans should be asking ourselves are;
1. Do we need this model of an RIR? - well APNIC, ARIN, LACNIC and RIPE were created for other regions so it made sense then Africa had an RIR. But 15 years down the line we should realize this centralized model created by a few with intelligent holes in policy, location, charade debates etc is not helping.

A country like Seychelles with less than 1.5 million inhabitants currently hold 7% of the allocated resources whilst the most populated country on the continent Nigeria with over 186 million inhabitants hold 2% of the allocated resources. Why? Our policies enables that and our RIR needs money to maintain huge benefits, salries and travelling costs for staffs leaving on a paradise island which entities outside our region are willing to pay and use the holes in our policies to register offshore companies to comply.

2. Should the RIR be decentralized and its resources (both digital and human) efficiently channeled with supporting revised stringent policies? Yes we need a decentralized RIR well rooted around the continent in terms of operations and supported by different policy mindset to POLICE correlation of number resources with infrastructure and innovation in our region.  APNIC, ARIN, LACNIC and RIPE are doing the opposite and so what?

On the other hand I am not taking sides here because its annoying and shameful to see employees of some carriers defending the current SL-BIS because it favours them not to mention their shameful alliance with outsiders to loot our resources. How can an entity involved in "carriers carrier" business model officially registered on an island with less 1.3 million inhabitants have /12 IPv4 addresses. Well the current policy enabled them to comply.

If we had stringent policy aligned to drag along even development in our region the above /12 would have had more impact in our region.

Wishing all the community a thoughtful and prosperous 2018 !!!

cheer

K.

On 30 December 2017 at 19:29, Kangamutima zabika Christophe <funga.roho at yandex.com<mailto:funga.roho at yandex.com>> wrote:
Andrew Alston de LiquidTelecom

En tant qu'africain, je pense qu'il faudrait d'abord défendre les intérêts des africains (aujourd'hui et dans l'avenir). Les ISP dont tu parles contribuent pour combien au PIB des pays africains, quel ce pays africain qui s'est développé par l'entremise des ISP?
La plupart des cas ce ne sont que des capitalistes qui ne voient que leurs intérêts au détriment même des africains considéré comme consommateurs dupes. Pourquoi vous ne défendez pas les Africains qui sont licensiés abusivement par les IPS, pourquoi vous ne condamnez pas les ISP qui fraude sur le fisc en Afrique?
qui piétinent la plupart des régulations mis en place en Afrique, pourquoi vous ne moralisez les ISP qui se sont illustrés dans la corruption des dirigeants africains?
Vous ne vous levez que lorsqu'on veut atténuer leurs appetits démesurés de s'accaparer des ressources numéréiques de l'afrique. Nous les vrais africains, panafricanistes nous gardons le droit de gérer ces ressources comme bon nous semble. Cette propositon de SL-BIS est plus que salutaire pour les internautes résidant en afrique aujourd'hui et de demain.

Si la Justice Mauritienne est vraiment objective elle devrait se déporter et se déclarer incompétente de traiter d'un sujet qui concerne des ressources numériques destinés à des utilisateurs supranationaux.

Andrew Alston de LiquidTelecom

As an African, I think we should first defend the interests of Africans (now and in the future). The ISPs you are talking about contribute for how much to the GDP of the African countries, which African country that has developed through the ISPs?
Most of the cases are only capitalists who only see their interests to the detriment even of Africans considered duped consumers. Why do not you defend Africans who are falsely licensed by the IPS, why do not you condemn the ISPs that fraud on the tax in Africa?
which tramples most of the regulations put in place in Africa, why do not you moralize the ISPs who have distinguished themselves in the corruption of African leaders?
You only get up when you want to mitigate their disproportionate appetites for grabbing Africa's digital resources. We, the true African, pan-Africanists, have the right to manage these resources as we see fit. This proposal from SL-BIS is more than beneficial for Internet users residing in Africa today and tomorrow.

If the Mauritian Justice is really objective it should move away and declare itself incompetent to deal with a subject that concerns digital resources intended for supranational users.

29.12.2017, 19:07, "Andrew Alston" <andrew.alston at liquidtelecom.com<mailto:andrew.alston at liquidtelecom.com>>:

There was warning given – that should this policy proceed – it would be a threat to business interests and expansion of the internet on the continent.  I and others, are no longer prepared to wait to see if that threat materializes, it is best to see that threat eliminated BEFORE it becomes reality, hence the timing of this action.

Irrespective of how one THINKS AFRINIC should be constituted – that is immaterial – it is what it is today – and changing it is a time consuming process that would require super majority votes and other things – so – this action is very applicable to the situation we find ourselves in *TODAY*

I asked the board months ago to investigate the possibility of being in violation of this act and to advise this community as to what steps could be taken to rectify it if they were in violation – despite promises – no word back was ever received – so now – we will test it through the tribunal and let them decide.

I have said repeatedly on this list – a threat to corporate ISP interests on this continent by this organisation and by policy through the PDP will eventually result in severe problems – it is absolutely unconscionable that this community has a.) refused to pass an inbound transfer policy to allow entities to buy space in from outside when they need it b.) refused to pass a bi-directional transfer policy to achieve the same c.) decided to declare consensus on a policy for which there was no consensus which prevents organisations that have spent significant sums of money from getting any IP space whatsoever on the continent because of the lack of (a) and (b).

That my friend, was always going to be met with swift and resounding challenge – and I have said repeatedly – perhaps the time has come to test these things beyond the waters of the lay people on this list – that time has come

Andrew

From: Kangamutima zabika Christophe <funga.roho at yandex.com<mailto:funga.roho at yandex.com>>
Date: Friday, 29 December 2017 at 11:59
To: Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston at liquidtelecom.com<mailto:Andrew.Alston at liquidtelecom.com>>, rpd <rpd at afrinic.net<mailto:rpd at afrinic.net>>
Subject: Re: [rpd] Competitions Tribunal Petition

Andrew,

Je comprends parfaitement ton raisonnement, cela d'abord dû à la forme juridique adoptée par AFRINIC, elle devait être une organisation supranationale avec un siège en Ile Maurice mais actuellement elle est une organisation à but non lucratif enregistrée en Ile Maurice.

Mon problème ce serait d'abord l'applicabilité d'une telle décision et le caractère prématuré de cette action parceque ce n'est encore qu'un projet de politique. AFRINIC gère des ressources allouables à des réquérants résidant dans un ensemble des pays. Dans tel cas, nous devrions avoir un texte unique régissant cette matière et ratifié par tous les Etats faisant partie de la couverture géographique d'AFRINIC (ça pourrait être un traité international, une charte comme celle des Nations Unies) mais dans le cas d'Afrinic il y a quand même une bouillabaisse juridique. Parceque tous les pays n'ont peut être pas le même entendement d'une notion comme la position dominante abusive en matière de gestion des ressources numériques. Et le jugement que cette cour rendra, se fera sur base de la procédure d'élaboration des politiques d'Afrinic ou sur base d'un texte analogue en vigueur en Ile Maurice?

KANGAMUTIMA ZABIKA

Andrew
I understand your reasoning perfectly, firstly due to the legal form adopted by AFRINIC, it must be a supranational organization with a seat in Mauritius but currently it is a non-profit organization registered in Mauritius.
My problem would be first the applicability of such a decision and the premature nature of this action because it is still only a draft policy. AFRINIC manages resources that can be allocated to applicants residing in a set of countries. In such a case, we should have a single text governing this matter and ratified by all the States forming part of AFRINIC's geographical coverage (it could be an international treaty, a charter like the one of the United Nations) but in the case of Afrinic there is still a legal bouillabaisse. Because all countries may not have the same understanding of a notion like the abusive dominant position in the management of digital resources. And the judgment that this court will make, will be made on the basis of the procedure of elaboration of the policies of Afrinic or on the basis of a similar text in force in Mauritius?

29.12.2017, 18:44, "Andrew Alston" <andrew.alston at liquidtelecom.com<mailto:andrew.alston at liquidtelecom.com>>:

Just to clarify,

You are incorrect in your assessment.  You are correct that Mauritian law only effects those domiciled in Mauritius EXCEPT:

  1.  AFRINIC is domiciled in Mauritius – and subject to Mauritian law in all actions.
  2.  The Mauritian competitions act states explicitly that it reserves the right to sanction companies who are in violation of anti-trust outside of its borders (I would presume this would mean that said companies may find themselves barred from doing business in Mauritius – but it’s a little unclear)
  3.  If AFRINIC’s actions as a Mauritian domiciled company run afoul of Mauritian law – it is that law that they are subject to – irrespective of where those actions are taken.

Yes – theoretically – AFRINIC could move to another country – however – that would probably not be looked at terribly favourably by the Mauritian entities – companies that deliberately try to evade the law end up with directors in lots of hot water.  Furthermore – the MoU that AFRINIC signed to create itself, if I remember correctly, explicitly states that it will be domiciled in Mauritius and lists a ton of reasons why – changing that – would not be simple.

Let us test this now – if myself and the other petitions are wrong – no harm no foul – and no one has anything to be scared of – however – the time for that test is nigh – let us see

Andrew

From: Kangamutima zabika Christophe <funga.roho at yandex.com<mailto:funga.roho at yandex.com>>
Date: Friday, 29 December 2017 at 11:16
To: Andrew Alston <Andrew.Alston at liquidtelecom.com<mailto:Andrew.Alston at liquidtelecom.com>>, rpd <rpd at afrinic.net<mailto:rpd at afrinic.net>>
Subject: Re: [rpd] Competitions Tribunal Petition

Alors là on se retrouve dans une berezina. Ceux qui se sont investis à imposer leur vision, faute d'avoir réussi, s'adresse maintenant à une juridiction mauricienne. Une fois encore, se pose la question de la qualité de cette juridiction de statuer sur une cause concernant l'ensemble des pays africains et une partie de l'océan indien. Si cette cour à une compétence nationale, le verdict qu'elle rendra concernera t elle seulement les ressources numériques qui seront allouées dans sa zone d'influence c'est-à-dire l'Ile Maurice (au cas où elle ordonnait l'abrogation de cette proposition de politique)? En plus, peut-on ester en justice contre un projet de loi ou une proposition de règlement non encore ratifiée ou promulguée? Tout ceci dénote une procédure un peu cavalière, corollaire d'un acharnement non justifié contre la décision prise par le groupe de travail dirigé par les 2 co-présidents. Concernant les lois de mon pays, aucune juridiction d'Ile Maurice n'a ni la compétence matérielle encore moins la compétence territoriale de juger une cause portant sur les modalités d'attributions des ressources numériques destinés entr'autres à des requérants résidents en République Démocratique du Congo (surtout que nous sommes affiliés à l'OHADA pour le droit des affaires). Concernant, toute ressource pouvant être allouée à une entité ou personne vivant en RDC, toute décision prise par cette juridiction serait de nul effet.

KANGAMUTIMA ZABIKA

29.12.2017, 17:56, "Andrew Alston" <andrew.alston at liquidtelecom.com<mailto:andrew.alston at liquidtelecom.com>>:

Hi All,

Everything stated here is done in my personal capacity and is not necessarily representative of the views of any organization to which I am affiliated.

It is a sad day when it comes to this – but due to the significant business risks imposed by the potential ratification of the soft-landing policy, and the boards lack of response to repeated queries as to AFRINIC’s violation of Mauritian law – the time has come to now test these potential violations and to see if there is any recourse.

Since this document contains direct reference to issues of policy that would normally fall under the RPD – I am sending this to the list.  Those who wish to join the petition to the competitions tribunal can print this – sign it – and scan it back to me.  This document will be submitted to the competitions tribunal within the next 14 days – to give people a chance to digest its contents and decide for themselves if they believe they wish to be party to this action.

Note: As per the rules of the competitions tribunal – any signatory on these documents will be confidential and the names of the complainants will not be disclosed to AFRINIC – so there is no risk of victimization here.  Any signed copies received by myself shall be held in strictest confidence other than for the purposes of submission to the commission.

Please also note – the submission of this petition shall in no way prejudice the right to potential litigation against AFRINIC should companies and individuals feel that such is warranted.

Yours Sincerely

Andrew Alston

,

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Direction Générale des Douanes et

Accises

DRC

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