ICANN takes action as Asia runs out of Internet addresses September 12, 2011, 11:31pm MANILA, Philippines - Asia ran out of Internet address space (Internet Protocol version 4 or IPv4) last month. Hence, "Transition to the next-generation address space protocol, IPv6, is critical and proving to be difficult." Judith Duavit-Vazquez, the first Filipino woman to become Director of the global body governing the web - the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) issued the warning in a press briefing the other day. ICANN coordinates the internet's unique identifiers - Domain Names and IP Addresses - so computers will find each other. "Due to the large Asia Pacific population, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have no option but to adopt IPv6 to serve the billions of unserved Internet users," she stressed. To complicate matters, internet access in Asia remains low - only 922 million are active Internet users out of a population of 3.8 billion as of March 2011. Countries in the region are still challenged in terms of connectivity due to geographical challenges, cost of access and technology. Hence, among ICANN's strategic thrusts is the launch of the Internationalized Domain Names for Country Code Top-Level Domains (IDN ccTLD) Fast Track Process. This enables countries and territories using languages based on scripts other than Latin to offer users domain names in non-Latin characters. A country's name and domain names may now be written in local scripts. Some of the native Asian languages that can be applied for IDN are Chinese, Hindi, Russian, Arabic, Thai, among others. As of this writing, current number of ICANN received Fast Track requests are 33 (representing 22 languages). The current Internet is an "Internet of the West" due to the use of Roman alphabets, ICANN's new Director pointed out. "The IDN process will truly establish ICANN's vision statement of "one world, one Internet, everyone on it." Even the Philippines has a long way to go remarked Duavit-Vazquez who sees herself as the "Asian voice" of the governing body. "The Internet and the envied web-entrepreneur class in countries like the United States were created by private equity investments and capital markets," she cited. "The Philippine government can spur innovation by reviewing and amending antique laws and regulations in telecommunications and media ownership that deter foreign investments. We should consider an open skies policy allowing foreign telcos to bring traffic in and out of the country," she stressed. Under the 1987 Constitution, foreign ownership of public utility firms is currently limited to 40 percent, while media entities should be exclusively owned by Filipinos. Thus, opening up requires amending the constitution. Furthermore, "Our government has yet to embrace the Internet as its communications highway, our ISPs do not peer, our electricity and international bandwidth costs are among the highest in the world driving content hosting to other nations and thus increasing latency," the ICANN Director enumerated. While 8 submarine cables terminate in the country, the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) controls 7 of the cables. "In effect, they block out 47 foreign telcos, which accounts for the high voice termination costs and high bandwidth rates in the country," she pointed out. "Foreign telcos are not allowed in the central business district. A local telecom company delivers terrestrial fibering into Philippine land." Domestic peering can also lower costs. Traditionally, internet traffic is routed via international peering points regardless of where they originate. When a user of one local telco calls a user of another telco, the traffic goes out of the country before reaching its destination, although both originate and end in the same country. When a common peering point is established locally, the traffic doesn't have to go outside the country anymore. But competing ISPs need a neutral peering site. "The world's more than 450 peering points are located either in government or in the largest scientific learning base of the country, which is the university," she went on. Unfortunately, an "infrastructure mistake" has stalemated local efforts for establishing a co-location point. The Philippine Open Internet Exchange was hosted at Globe Telecom's MK2 data center in Makati. Rival Smart Communications Inc. and parent firm PLDT naturally opposed domestic peering. Also, "If I am a big telecom ISP like PLDT with 60 percent market share, will I allow a small Internet provider in the province to piggyback on my market? There's a financial consideration at stake." Needless to say, "At this point in time, we don't have a neutral colocation site in the country except one: PHCOLO, which I founded and puts me in a conflict of interest," Duavit-Vazquez noted. "What the government could do, through the Advanced Science and Technology Institute of the Department of Science and Technology (DoST-ASTI), is co-locate one server rack in their facility to act as the domestic peering point."
Abdelfattah ABUQAYYAS, PhD ICT Counselor/ www.citc.gov.sa<blocked::http://www.citc.gov.sa/> P.O. Box 75606, Riyadh 11588, Saudi Arabia Mobile +966-556642230; Tel. +966-1-263-9236 Twitter: http://twitter.com/abuqayyas Facebook: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Google Reader: https://www.google.com/reader/shared/afabuqayyas Google+: https://plus.google.com/115963448911958590335/posts ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Disclaimer: This message and its attachment, if any, are confidential and may contain legally privileged information. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender immediately and delete this message and its attachment, if any, from your system. You should not copy this message or disclose its contents to any other person or use it for any purpose. Statements and opinions expressed in this e-mail are those of the sender, and do not necessarily reflect those of the Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC). CITC accepts no liability for damage caused by this email.
_______________________________________________ Menog mailing list [email protected] http://lists.menog.net/mailman/listinfo/menog
