Nortel sells its IPv4 address range

The depletion of the range of IPv4 addresses seems to be pushing market players to a new type of deal. Thus, the Canadian company Nortel Networks, which in 2009 declared itself bankrupt and is currently in the process of liquidation, has put up for sale its IPv4 address range. The size of the range is 666.624 addresses. The buyer was the company Microsoft, which on March 16 acquired the specified range for $ 7.500.000. It is easy to calculate that each IP address cost Microsoft $ 11.25 [1].

Most of the addresses from the sold range, namely 470.016, are subject to immediate transfer to the buyer. The remaining 196.608 addresses are currently used to ensure the transition of a number of services previously owned by Nortel, under the control of new owners. These addresses will be made available to Microsoft upon the expiration of the relevant agreements with the said owners. This should happen this year [2].
However, in this situation, the position of the American registrar ARIN (American Registry for Internet Numbers), which distributes IPv4 addresses in the United States, is unclear. At one time, it was ARIN that singled out the addresses to Nortel companies. The fact is that according to the ARIN rules, the transfer of the address space to another organization can be carried out in two scenarios [3]. The first scenario is governed by clause 8.2 - Mergers and Acquisitions. In this case, in order to gain control over the new address space, Microsoft must acquire not the addresses themselves, but the Nortel assets that used these addresses. However, no other assets besides the IPv4 addresses themselves are available in the documents available for analysis regarding the transaction.
The second scenario is governed by clause 8.3 - Transfers to Specified Recipients, according to which Microsoft must convincingly justify the need to transfer its address space to it. But in the case when the need does exist, the addresses can be obtained “for free” from ARIN itself and there is no need to pay $ 11.25 for each address.
In any case, I think that the details of this interesting transaction will become available in the near future. In the meantime, it remains only to observe what steps the company will take to bite off the last piece in the process of dividing the IPv4 cake.

References:
[1] www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=206060
[2] chapter11.epiqsystems.com/NNI/docket/Default.aspx (Docket # 5143)
[3] www.arin.net/policy/nrpm.html#eight
[4] www.ipv4depletion.com/?p=585