Orbit

Dean,

In my head at present, I think there are 2 issues here that need to be discussed.

The first issue is that rightly or wrongly India would like for itself some form of country or economy based allocation, and I would argue that if they want to impose that upon themselves then it really is their call, and one that I believe they can facilitate directly with APNIC. The Indian representatives can try to make this a policy and get a group consensus from other member countries to see if it would be a wise thing for them to undertake, however history and common sense seems to be in opposition to date.

The second issue, however is what really needs to be fleshed out and understood. Why drive this across the entire APNIC region ? What are the benefits in doing so ? What does India as a region/economy gain by having this policy applied to all member countries ? Why are we assuming that all member economies are in the same position and would benefit in the same manner ? As discussed to date there are clearly no technical benefits in doing so, there are no resource limitation drivers to go down this path and if anything it will adversely affect what exists today.

Maybe India should go down this path, and undertake a 24 month case study for us to all witness if this is a viable model or not and we can then decide if it is a policy that should be adopted throughout the region, or if it becomes an opt-in policy that some specific economies may wish to undertake.

As I have previously stated (or ranted, depending on your point of view) I am absolutely opposed to this type of policy. I can neither see any technical merits nor any economical benefits of going down such a path. However I think debating the virtues of such a policy has merits, if only to reinforce that what we have today works, and I would really like to see some credible arguments and research from the proposers of such a policy to allow a proper debate to take place.

My 2c worth,

Cheers