[arin-ppml] FW: Stepping forward, opening my mouth and removing all doubt about

[michael.dillon at bt.com]

> Alain, as a person from an ISP wouldn't the ability to sell 
> IPv4 resources freed up by a conversion to IPv6 add anything 
> to the incentives of ISPs to make the migration? Of course 
> that is more a matter for your business officers but I 
> suspect that it could make a difference. 

There is such a thing as "core business" and selling or buying of
addresses is so far from the core of an ISP's business that I cannot
imagine any ISP decision-makers even considering this as an incentive
for more than a minute. The numbers just aren't big enough. Let's not
forget that the ISP business is a subscription business where the
customers keep on paying month after month for the term of the contract
which is often greater than one year. And contracts tend to be renewed
unless the ISP has done something bad. ISP business decision-makers are
looking for recurring revenue opportunities, not the one time boost from
selling of an IP address block.

I'm quite sure that product managers will try to build IP address
revenue into their business cases, but I would hope that the finance
people catch this trick to disguise the true cost of their product plan.
In most cases, the IP addresses don't belong to the product, i.e. it is
the underlying network operations group that owns the addresses, and if
there is some money to be made, those are the guys who will want to own
the revenue in the same way that they sell off any other obsolete stuff.
But if they do sell off some addresses, this is not going to be any
incentive to new product deployment or at the board level, because it
will be lost several levels deep in the financials.

--Michael Dillon