Industry news
Action needed to save internet, says expert
Urgent action needs to be taken in order to prevent the internet from grinding to a halt, one industry expert told a European conference.
Viviane Reding, the European commissioner for telecommunications, urged the industry to act now to accelerate the adoption of IPv6.
Speaking at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's Future of the Internet Economy event, she revealed the European commission set a target last month that 25 per cent of the continent's users are connected by IPv6 by 2010.
"We indeed risk falling short of internet addresses within 3 years," she added.
In agreement, Geoff Huston, chief scientist of the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre, said failure to upgrade would undermine the world's economy.
"The simple observation is that we really should be well into a transition across the entire industry by now, and we are nowhere near that point," he added.
Regulator Ofcom revealed recently that UK networks require investments to the tune of some £830 million over the next five years to cope with the surging bandwidth demand due to online video services.
