The year 2009 witnessed a number of important developments in India that will set the stage further rapid development in the Internet arena. Mobile subscriptions have touched ~440M (both GSM and CDMA inclusive) putting a lot of pressure on the spectrum available to permit further growth. DTH subscriptions have touched 25 million out of an estimated 150 million Pay TV analog cable subscriptions. More players are entering this emerging market thereby increasing competition and increasing addressable market size. IPTV service is now available in the market that brings new players and changing the nature of competition. Although 2010 promised to take these growth figures to the next level, it also exposed the delicate fault lines that this growth is based on. Globally the trend seems to be towards convergence into Internet based businesses, something India would find hard to buck. This implies pressure on India's internet infrastructure - although each national service provider / operator owns long distance fiber optic networks, Internet numbering resource (IP addresses) are scarce. India has ~18 million IP addresses - grossly insufficient in the context of the growth stories in question. Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) estimate that by mid-2012, we would run out of IPv4 addresses that would put us in a precarious situation. India also has one of the world’s largest installed capacity of dark fiber at 670,000 Kms and one of the world’s lowest utilization at <2%.

Preparing for IPv6 deployment seems to be a prudent option in the face of the growth potential, convergence of technologies, the impending IPv4 address shortage and abundance of dark fiber. It is important to learn IPv6 deployment best practises, impact of IPv6 on traditional application models and explore potential new business opportunities with the extensibility brought about by deploying IPv6