AS Numbers from a common 32-bit pool.

Tue Dec 21 10:57:42 UTC 2010

On 2010/12/21 08:15, Matthew Palmer wrote:
> That would be why 32-bit ASNs have been "requestable" for the last 
> couple of
> years(?); you could have been prodding providers with "it doesn't work, fix
> it" for a while now.
>
> - Matt

Although I realise that, the problem in South Africa is that we 
essentially still have a Telecoms Monopoly: The local loop belongs to 
Telkom SA who also competes with ISPs in providing Internet access to 
clients, so growth in the ISP sector is stunted. There are only really a 
handful of other NSPs who service ISPs and those ISPs still have no 
access to the networking segment from Datacenter to DSLAM.

The major hope in .ZA is the unbundling of the local loop around 2012. 
Until then, there's no real end in sight (apart from mobile access, 
which is being stunted in many senses by the Communications Authority). 
ISPs just don't have that kind of prodding power in this country yet :(

And the bad news is that I hear our incumbent Telecoms operator is 
expanding further up the continent, so that their legacy of incompetence 
may remain for a while.

But we will continue pushing for these (legacy-)new technologies. :) One 
day we will prevail! :P

-H.