Right of Reply from Cloud Innovation

Mauritius plays an important role in the governance of global internet and hosts AFRINIC - the regional internet registry for Africa. This private company is given the task of ensuring fair access to the billions of internet users. AFRINIC is governed by its membership and the membership were proud to select Mauritius as its base based on the strong principles of democracy, freedom of speech and the rule of law. Over the last few years, AFRINIC has been subject to allegations of poor governance and corruption. The concerns of members have been so serious that at least eight different parties have brought legal cases to the courts in Mauritius. The right place for legal disagreements is the courts of Mauritius, not the newspapers of Mauritius.

It is therefore unfortunate that some former senior members of AFRINIC staff have used the pages of Le Defi to fight against one of the eight claimants, Cloud Innovation. And when mistruths are published in Mauritius’ famously independent newspapers, it is right that a right of reply is provided so that readers can see the facts for themselves.

Cloud Innovation provides global IP address management service, its customer including some of leading telecom on the planet, its customer cross 60 countries including many AFRICAN countries, and its customer(telecoms) by using the IP address provided by Cloud Innovation, is serving millions of websites, and hundreds of millions end users worldwide. Founded in 2013, it is a partner of LARUS Limited, a world leading IP address solution provider. Over the cause of past year, AFRINIC have made numbers of claims against Cloud Innovation including, most
worrying of all, demanding Cloud Innovation monitor hundreds of millions end users and threaten terminating internet connectivity of those end users if refused.

AFRINIC’s behaviour has forced Cloud Innovation to fight for the rights of end users in the courts in Mauritius. In a previous article in Le Defi, accusation made by AFRINIC were reported and they were wholly false. It is right that this article has now been removed. It was wrong to state that Cloud Innovation is buying vote at AFRINIC election.

The claims that Cloud Innovation is trying to control the board of directors of AFRINIC are totally unfounded. It was factually incorrect to claim Cloud Innovation have retained an injunction to stop AFRINIC’s illegal election. The injunction was retained by a different member of AFRINIC. The facts are that at least eight different parties are suing AFRINIC, including many of its resources members as well as the suspended CEO of AFRINIC, Eddy Kayihura.

A number of factual inaccuracies have also been reported about the CEO of Cloud Innovation, Mr. Lu Heng. Lu Heng is a global citizen and defender of free internet access for all. He studied at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, he holds residencies in multiple countries worldwide including Europe, Middle East and Asia. Mr. Lu has long participated in internet policy making and making various presentations in different regional internet registry meetings worldwide for the past decades and holds numbers of advisory seats and board seats in numbers of non-profit global organizations such as the Pacific Telecommunication Council.

Cloud Innovation believes in a bottom-up, community driven approach to internet governance. Cloud Innovation strongly opposes overreaching claims made by community based private companies such as Regional Internet Registries like AFRINIC. We believe Regional Internet Registries are bookkeepers and they should not possess the power of nations and decide who
have rights to access the internet based on their monopolistic power.

Cloud Innovation will keep fighting to protect the rights of hundreds of millions of end users that its serves and including those in Africa. When journalists get facts wrong, it is important that a right of reply and facts are provided. Just as the rule of law is so important, so is free and fair media. It is one of the reasons that members are fighting the attempts by some senior former members of staff and board directors to relocate AFRINIC from Mauritius to a country with fewer freedoms and rights. Cloud Innovation are grateful to Le Defi for allowing us to set the record straight with the facts.

Management of Cloud Innovation