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

[Calvin Browne]

On Tue, 2003-09-30 at 23:34, jlewis at lewis.org wrote:
> 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

That's easy to answer - they normally compete with their clients.

>  
> 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 

This would have given me a hell of a lot more wiggle room when I was in
this position.

regards

--Calvin

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