Are NIRs limiting the nation’s say in APNIC governance policies?
(NIR: Boon or Bane – Is APNIC policy of Members Voting Rights doing the Justice with NIRs and Corresponding Countries)

APNIC (the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre) is the regional Internet address registry (RIR) for the Asia-Pacific region, service 56 economies, including India, Bangladesh, China, Australia, Japan and others. APNIC is one of the world's five RIRs and is part of the Number Resource Organization (NRO).

As of date, the following 7 NIRs (National Internet Registries) are registered with APNIC for serving the local internet community ^[1][2][3] –

APNIC Membership is classified into 7 tiers depending on the IP holding by each member. Each membership tier has voting rights. These voting rights play a crucial role in governance and policies matters of APNIC.

As per the Membership tier voting chart, every member can have a max of 64 votes (including NIRs) but APNIC charges an additional 190% premium on the annual membership fees from NIR, which leads to effective membership fees for NIRs equals to 290% of the ordinary membership fee ^[6], but with no added advantage of voting rights. Members of NIR didn’t get the voting rights in APNIC, even though they pay the fees to NIR and indirectly pay to APNIC, as NIR pays to APNIC as per resources holdings of all its members plus an additional 190% premium over and above of ordinary fee.

Average vote per member across top 13 economies 4.20

(Vietnam is not included while calculating the average vote per member because VN has only 2 members, VNNIC and VN Post and Telecommunications, and including VN while calculating average votes, leads to changing of figures from 4.20 to 5.97 as VNNIC has 64 votes, which will not be on the average side).

* Economies which have NIRs are star marked

If every resource holder (doesn’t matter whether membership is with RIR and NIR) has voting rights in APNIC, then the voting rights table will change to (average votes per member are 4.20, as calculated above. Here, I am taking 2 votes per NIR member for conservative calculation and 3 votes per NIR member for realistic calculation) –

In this scenario, I have considered every NIR member on average have 2 voting rights (which is more towards the conservative side), and the results are as - AU is no more in top position and Indonesia rises from 14^th position to 3^rd position, similarly, China rises from 6 to 4^th and Vietnam rises from 27^th to 11^th position. So, If APNIC gives fair chances to the countries where NIR is doing great work in the expansion of the Internet, then ID and VN will get the maximum benefits concerning the voting rights.

In this case, India rises from 4^th to 1^st position, Indonesia rises from 14^th position to 2^nd position, China rises from 6 to 4^th , Vietnam rises from 27^th to 8^th position and Taiwan rises from 18^th to 13^th position.

So, If APNIC gives the fair chances to the countries where NIR is doing a great work in expansion of Internet , then IN, ID and VN will get the maximum benefits (as per voting rights) and will have much more say in the APNIC policies and governance, which will be beneficial for the whole Internet community as this will correctly capture the members interests and can guide the governance and policies for the benefit of whole community.

References:

1. 1. https://www.apnic.net/about-apnic/organization/apnic-region/national-internet-registries
2. 2. https://conference.apnic.net/52/program/schedule/#/day/2/nir-sig-forum
3. 3. Please note: In the EC meeting of 27 February 2012, the EC resolved to impose a moratorium on accepting any new NIR applications while the EC evaluates the future of the NIR program, without prejudice to existing NIRs.
   Ref - https://www.apnic.net/about-apnic/organization/apnic-region/national-internet-registries/
4. 6. https://www.apnic.net/about-apnic/corporate-documents/documents/membership/member-fee-schedule/#1.4
5. 7. https://www.apnic.net/about-apnic/organization/structure/members/