But you would need to be upfront with that, including mentioning that your upstreams are not from Africa and your installations won't be in Africa. Otherwise you applied for number resources under false pretenses, and will bear the risk of such.
Again, fair enough. And what happens if the same hosting company is struggling and now decides to offer its services to other regions as well? Are they now out of compliance and at risk to have their precious number resources revoked?
If they will provide services to both the original region and different regions, they should apply to number resources from a region that does not have such restrictions, like the region where they physically host servers, and divide their provisioning between original regions and alternate regions.
My point is not that you are wrong (your interpretation of the clause is very reasonable). My point is that different people have a different understanding of the plain language of that clause. And that is assuming that it applies, as I believe that CI is arguing that it does not.
And they might have a point there, but I don't see them living up to whatever they wrote in their application for number resources.
I regret the true human cost that Mark pointed out, yet I am fascinated by the case and the arguments on both sides. The court will have their work cut out for them.
That human cost came not from disagreement on the policies and contract provisions, but from a vengeful action of financial bullying. I saw my quota of questionable court decisions to automatically agree with whatever is decided in this case, even if CI loses, but the arguments from both sides will indeed be very interesting and useful to close out loopholes in the system. Rubens