[ppml] Policy Proposal 2003-15: IPv4 Allocation Policy for the Africa Portion of the ARIN Region

[jlewis at lewis.org]

On Mon, 29 Sep 2003, Bill Woodcock wrote:

>       On Wed, 24 Sep 2003, William Stucke wrote:
>     > In most of the 53 countries in Africa, ISPs don't
>     > have a choice of from whom they get service, nor how it is carried. They are
>     > obliged to use the monopoly incumbent, or go to jail. Some of those monopoly
>     > Telcos are VERY reluctant to assign IP addresses - e.g. Kenya.
> 
> This is an important factor for Americans to consider carefully before
> rushing to judgement in this issue.  One of the _really fundamental_
> assumptions Americans make, upon which the whole policy framework in
> America is founded, is that customers can vote with their feet.  That is,
> if a customer doesn't like the policies of an upstream provider
> ($500/month for an additional IP address, or whatever), they can simply
> switch providers, and give their money to someone more reasonable.  That
> logic is simply not applicable in the African regulatory context, and that
> fundamental difference informs this whole debate.  So, American ARIN

Why are the monopoly incumbent carriers so reluctant to assign additional 
IPs when their customers have used up what they have?  If it's simply to 
extort more money from them, is there any reason to believe giving them 
portable space is going to make a difference?  "oh...you want to do BGP 
now?...well, that's going to be an extra $X/month per IP you announce to 
us."

Now this sounds like a[n attempted] technical solution to a non-technical 
problem.

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 Jon Lewis *jlewis at lewis.org*|  I route
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