The Chief Executive Officer, AfriNIC, the Regional Internet Registry for Africa, Mr. Adiel Akplogan spoke with the Group Executive Editor, DigitalSENSE Business News, REMMY NWEKE at the recently ended African ICT Week 2013 at the African Union headquarters, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He shared his thoughts on Internet eco-system in Africa, Fund for Research and Education (FIRE) and ICT Week.
What is AfriNIC all about for the common man in Africa?
WHAT we are mainly created for is to manage the identifiers which are used to connect to the internet. We have a way of identifying these numbers. Like you have your phone connected to the Internet, every equipment connected is identified on the internet and it’s global.
Registry like AfriNIC are set up around the globe, there are five of them in charge of specific regions, managing those identifiers and making sure that these numbers are allocated in a very professional way, to avoid duplication and register them as well as make them available in a public database, so that anyone can check who is using what.
AfriNIC specifically was set up for our region to help and support network operators to engage in these resources, because they need them to run their networks and if we are in the region that is seeing the most tremendous growth on the internet usage, we can obviously understand that those resources become very critical.
During your presentation earlier, you made mention of some 47m uptake on Internet Protocols. Do you think that’s commensurate to the population of Africa?
No! Of course not! the ratio between that and the population of Africa is still very, very low, however, it’s a work in progress and something that has significantly improved and even as I mentioned this morning; in 20 years, only 10m IP addresses were allocated, but over the past 8 years, we have gone 47m, almost 500+ growth within this period of the past eight years.
Yes, there is a huge work for awareness and capacity building and to understand that to build a resilient, reliable and secure network, and long-term network, you have to use the IP because that is what they are meant for and Internet has been designed to use public IP. In Africa, by default we go to nothing, because at the very early days of the Internet, there was no registry, so operators sold IP addresses and even sold the idea to the people that there are no IP addresses. So they now become the default solution. Well, that is the solution when you are running out of IP addresses or you don’t have IP address and you want to catch-up.
There is a lot of work to be done in terms of sensitising the operators on the importance of using their own IP addresses and the importance of using that to strengthen their networks and grow their network and ensure that its reliable, which is what the end-user wants; a reliable network they can rely on anytime and that is going by proper design of the network.
It does not commensurate, but at least, it shows things are progressing. We will continue to do that for operators to grow and have access to IP addresses as much as they want. I am not sure we are going to reach the one person per IP ratio very soon but we shall increase it to the extent that we have efficient network running. At least, we can project into the future.
One other excuse some of the operators do give is the cost of acquiring the IP addresses. What do you have to say on that?
Really, the cost is not very big. The cost of an IP address is less than 10 cents per an IP address, but the best thing is to compare the cost today to accessing IP address and the benefit of having IP addresses. Everything has a cost, nothing is free. So, you have to compare that with the advantage that that IPs bring to you. Nothing is free, now you have to compare that with the benefit that you get in getting a resilient network. Because if I am running a network, I would put everything in place to make sure that the network is reliable.
Yes, you have to pay to become AfriNIC member and then have access to those resources. The cost for me is very minimal. We are talking about a $1000 per year to become a small member and get those resources. If you are an operator that is providing real business services and providing bandwidth, the cost of our service; $1000 could be too much, but this is an argument we are used to and are used generally. So, we don’t sell IP addresses, but allocate to you to offer services and the membership is for those who offer these services.
Now, how does that translate to cheaper Internet for Africans?
It translates to cheaper internet because when you are running that and adding complexity to your network, obviously the cost of running that network goes up. That cost where does it go? Of course, to the end users. So, the first thing is that by running with your own IP address, you will one, de-complexify your network; secondly, you have the autonomy which allows you to change the operator without fearing renumbering.
For many operators, renumbering has a cost, meaning that if you don’t have your own IP address, you simply get you own IP address from an optimal provider, but by having that, you are linking yourself to them. In a way that it is their IP address, like I said, you don’t own IP addresses; they lend you IP addresses to do your businesses with.
The day you say, I have cheaper IP addresses and want to move, you are stuck, because if you move, you have to reinvest in renumbering all your IP infrastructure that your new operator will give you. Just because of that, many operators don’t move but would like to negotiate with the one they are with to get something, but I am not sure they are getting the optimum price. While if you have your own IP address, if you decide to move, you can move without any tie with your operators, so it gives you an independence that you don’t have if you don’t have your own IP addresses. This means that you can negotiate best price for your connection and then replicate that to the customers as well. So, it impacts on the affordability to access for the customers.
Overall, we do IP addresses. On top of that we also try to help to support all initiatives that help to drop the cost like the eXchange Points by helping people to understand peering and the role of peering which could help them drop the cost significantly by properly choosing who they want to peer with. One thing is to have the link and once you have the link you can peer with anyone. And as soon as you decide that, that is where I am sending my links. But it’s not automatic that you are sending your traffics where you are lending your leased lines from.
So, these are some of the tricks, which are the basics of the Internet business which some operators do not know. Hence, it is part of our capacity building as well in different engagement initiatives in the region, like the African Peering Forum where we put on situation on how you negotiate your situation; negotiate the best price and how you peer with your counterpart on the internet. That is also part of our direction.
Are you satisfied with the number of Internet Exchange Points on the continent?
Satisfied? We can never be satisfied. Satisfaction is not an end goal, but something that will continue. We have come a long way and made a lot of progress, though a lot more still need to be done.
Like what and what?
To build more exchange points and sensitise people on the use of the Exchange Points as the focal points for their local traffic and the operators and government must facilitate that. Is not the one government would say they are coming in to set up exchange points and bringing people in. No! Peering is fundamentally something that is negotiated on bilateral agreement, which is a business agreement.
Like I mentioned earlier, people may have links to an exchange, nothing says they must send their traffics there. May be in their business rules it is more expensive to send their traffic there, because they may have a cheaper agreement with somebody else who they are peering with outside the region, who is offering them the cheapest price.
So, the Exchange Point has to be in a clear strategy of development and where operators are fully buying into them. It is their exchange point and it’s their point of exchanging traffic and they have to be completely committed to that. Government has to facilitate that those Exchange points are there, because the role of managing the exchange remain that of the operators. At the end of the day, it’s an element supporting the whole industry.
Do you think that legislating on eXchange Point could boost adaption?
I am personally skeptical about that approach of forcing people to do that through legislation. We have seen many examples where government did that and it did not work. Again, like I said earlier, yes, you may ask people to do it but you cannot force them to send their traffic there. The impact may not be there by forcing and then the Internet is a technology but a culture that follows a different business model. That’s again what we need to understand that culture, absorb it and understand that it’s a culture build on shared-responsibility.
For a shared-responsibility to be a vision, we need all the elements of shared-responsibility to be engaged. So, I am not convinced at all that imposing on operators’ in a country to peer at the Exchange Point will bring any benefit. In contrary, it will derail the logic behind peering agreement.
What will you tell us about the AfriNIC’s Fund for Internet Research and Education (FIRE)?
Two years ago, we set up Fund for Internet Research and Education (FIRE) to which AfriNIC and few others contributed to encourage research in education, like Dr. Nii Quaynor, IDFC, CIDA and a few others; trying to support innovation in our region. We always praise the Internet as a wonderful tool which has to be a tool of innovation for our region. Address some critical issues we are facing today.
So, this fund will help those innovative creativities by providing them with small grants to kick-off their research and there is a part of it that is also for education; we training people on how to manage their projects and make it visible to more technical issue. It is a fund that we have launched to support again work on innovation.
Are there specific areas FIRE is focusing at now?
We have some three key areas for now. We have technology innovation on mobile environment, openness and freedom of speech and we also have human rights. All the information is on the website www.FIREAfrica.org.
What message are you leaving Africans with at this year’s African ICT Week?
For me, the initiative is a very good one coming from the African Union to bring the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) actors together, despite their differences in their backgrounds to talk about these issues on ICT development and internet particularly. I think it’s something we should always take-back as a continent. We cannot be talking at the global levels when we have not grown an ecosystem and environment that facilitate those talks. So, we have to take those talks back to make enabling environment to bring in different actors on ICT. ICT is a complex thing that no one can have a unique solution to.
We have to take in the multi-actors, multi-stakeholders, and multi-interest parties approach locally to build an environment that is conducive for internet development and for business development generally and also for human development. So, my main message here is that it should not stop here in Addis Ababa, so that at the end of the week, people must have enough to take back home, trying to enhance local environment for internet development and especially by engaging local capacity.
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