[address-policy-wg] RE: [arin-ppml] Offer to buy IP address block (was Spectrum and IP address reservations)

> > Someone recently offered an American ISP 6 figures for a /20 block 
> > that was acquired as part of a corporate acquisition.
> > The ISP declined the offer and returned the block to ARIN.
> >
> > This could mean that the value of a /20 on the open market 
> is 100,000 
> > USD. Since a /20 has 16 /24 equivalents in it, that would place the 
> > value of a /24 at 6250 USD.
> 
> http://xkcd.com/605/

Not terribly relevant to IPv4 addresses.

> > According to
> > <https://www.arin.net/knowledge/statistics/>
> > in the first 6 months of 2009, ARIN issued 99,285 /24 
> equivalents to 
> > ISPs. That means that ARIN issued 620,531,250 USD worth of IP 
> > addresses. Over the course of 2009 we can expect some
> > 1.2 billion dollars worth of IPv4 addresses to be allocated 
> to ISPs, 
> > or $103 million per month.
> >
> > Where is the industry going to find 1.2 billion dollars to sustain 
> > growth of the network after IPv4 runout? And where is a new entrant 
> > going to find $100,000 to buy their first allocation, assuming that 
> > the price doesn't rise even higher when the free 
> alternative no longer 
> > exists?

I just learned that 6 figures actually referred to 185,000 USD
so multiply all my above figures by 1.85. That brings the value
of ARIN's annual ISP allocations to 2.2 billion USD.

Another organization made an offer to use the address range for
spamming, without transfering ownership, and their offer amounts
to about 1/25th of the above one which would make ARIN's annual
ISP allocations worth only 48 million USD and a /20 would cost
approximately 4000 USD.

So there you have two actual price offers showing a substantial
range of values. Someone with actual economical statistics experience
may be able to suggest a likely distribution of prices over this
price range and come up with a more likely value of ARIN's annual
ISP allocations.

--Michael Dillon