Summary

  • LACNIC assigns an IPv4 waiting-list position to the organization that submitted the request. Its current guidance says the position is nontransferable and lost in a purchase, sale or merger.
  • Existing registered IPv4 blocks sit under different rules: LACNIC can process resource transfers arising from documented mergers and acquisitions. A buyer must separate those holdings from the target’s place in the queue.

The queue ticket is not in the asset folder

An acquisition schedule can list fibre, customers, licences and IPv4 blocks. Someone may add “place in LACNIC’s IPv4 queue” as though it were another movable asset. LACNIC’s waiting-list guidance supplies the awkward correction: the position is tied solely to the organization on whose behalf the request was made. Purchases, sales and mergers extinguish that position. The acquirer cannot ask the registry to keep the old number while changing the applicant behind it.

That distinction matters because the queue is long and the address amount is small. LACNIC currently estimates that the last request will wait at least 18 years and receive at most 1,024 IPv4 addresses. This is a registry estimate based on past recovery, not a promised delivery date for a named applicant. The number explains why even a contingent queue place may appear in a seller’s story. The nontransferability rule explains why it should not enter the buyer’s asset valuation as a continuing right.

The list itself is conditional. An organization needs LACNIC membership and an IPv6 assignment to enter. Requests move through tickets in arrival order, but a previously submitted ticket approved later can alter a displayed position. When recovered blocks approach release, LACNIC evaluates requests near the top and assigns resources only after approval. Mexico’s NIC.MX and Brazil’s NIC.br administer their own tickets separately. None of those mechanics turns a queue position into an address block already held by the applicant.

LACNIC’s IPv4 policy manual makes the contrast sharper. Section 2.3.2.17 permits the registry to process transfers of existing IPv4 resources following a partial or complete merger, acquisition, reorganization or relocation, supported by legal documents and a need assessment. Section 2.3.2.18 governs other authorised address-block transfers. Those paths move registrations that already exist. A waiting-list place is a claim to be considered for future recovered space, attached to a particular applicant, and LACNIC’s current guidance says it dies when that organization is bought or merged.

The transaction question is therefore specific. Does the target hold a registered prefix today, or only a ticket for one that might be recovered years later? If both appear in the data room, identify them separately. Check the registry holder, the legal chain needed to transfer actual holdings, the applicant named on the queue ticket and the proposed corporate transaction. Then remove any promised continuation of the queue place from the closing model. A purchase agreement can sell a business; it cannot preserve a waiting-list rank that the registry expressly ties to the old applicant.

Sources