HI, I do agree that for the most part, APNIC have not been bad to deal with, although this experience has shown me otherwise.
Isn't this the nub of the whole debate here. There's a bunch of people who think they have a class C or 2 that they've paid nothing for over the years who now find that Telecom has in fact been doing precisely what they should have been doing and, at first glance at least, Telecom has established title to these five /16s for a paltry US$10000 a year.
Large numbers of people with IP addresses in this range haven't done anything about keeping their records up to date, engaging with APNIC about title and now they're paying the penalty.
What about the people who are APNIC members, have had their space for a while, and are paying APNIC the yearly membership fees, but the assignments have still been gobbled up ?
Your IP address space is about as important a resource as you can think of. I'm stunned when people think they shouldn't have to pay for it. We're talking less that one laptop every other year - is it really that much money?
I dont think this is completely an issue of money - I do agree that for some people it is, but not universally. Many people concerned (including ourselves) are APNIC members, and do pay APNIC yearly membership fees, but we have still been affected by the lock ness-monster. So my (un-answered) question to APNIC on Thursday was: where is my money going now ?
Why should those of us who are APNIC members subsidise those in the community who are paying for their resource? We had this argument many years ago when we had to start paying for domain name registrations - now nobody thinks twice about it.
And setting up an NZ registry isn't the answer - there'd still be costs that you'd need to meet.
Maybe setting up a NZ registry isnt the answer, but surely Internet NZ would be a better (more neutral) candidate than TCNZ for managing the swamp space?
Start talking to APNIC here about your IP assignments and offer to pay the money - that way you'll get some traction. Complaining that this used to be free and Telecom are a bunch of thieves etc in this forum won't resolve the issue.
Unfortunately, APNIC dont care, even if you do pay them The best response I got from the APNIC helpdesk was to tell me to contact Telecom NZ to resolve the issue. Regards, Relihan.