[po polsku]

The President of Office of Electronic Communications (Polish national telecommunications regulator) is inviting participants to a public debate concerning the speeding up of implementing the new IPv6 protocol in Poland.

According to many forecasts, Internet's progress is so high that in a manner of two years all the IP addresses allocated according to the IP version 4 (IPv4) will have been exhausted. This in turn can inhibit the development of the Internet, with negative impact on the economic development, already slowed down by the crisis.

The issue is so pressing that it has become the subject of interest of the European Commission as well as individual EU country governments' focal point. The IPv6 protocol was established in 1995 and has been developed since then. It enables the use of an almost inexhaustible amount of IP addresses, however even its several-year-long history was not enough to popularize it - the needs so far have been fully satisfied by IPv4. Now the situation has changed - this may be the last moment to avoid the damages which can be caused by the exhaustion of IPv4 addresses together with the lack of IPv6's advantageous features.

It seems wrong to charge the market with the responsibility for the change, therefore country governments and their agencies increased their efforts, part of which is also the activity of the Office and the proposed debate.

The aim of the debate is to attempt to answer the following questions:

1. What is the reason behind the slow speed of implementing IPv6?
2. What are the conditions of providing Internet access with the use of
   IPv6 on the side of the biggest providers in Poland?
3. What are the conditions and obstacles of using IPv6 on the side of
   content providers with a mass-reader target?
4. What features of IPv6 are to be recognised as the protocol's
   relative strenghts as compared to IPv4 from the point of view of the users and
   mass content providers?
5. What activities of the governmental agencies can speed up the process
   of implementing IPv6?
6. Could mobile services serve as a catalyst in the implementation of IPv6?

The President of the Office hopes to achieve high interest in the debate and the commitment to present the points of view of the network operators, service providers and content providers, with additional emphasis on the presentation of the viewpoints of academic groups, research centers, business sector representatives and the entities responsible for the implementation of electronic services in administration.

The subjects to be covered during the debate are suggested as follows:

1. The experience in implementing IPv6 collected in other countries.
2. The management of IP address reserves and promoting faster
   implementation of IPv6.
3. The possibilities of improving network security and preventing illegal network content (films, music) from being distributed as a consequence of implementing IPv6.
4. The review of consumer-market routers enabling the IPv6 protocol.
5. An attempt to assess the cost of implementing IPv6 in the
   infrastructure of network operators and service and content providers.
6. IPv6 in mobile networks.

The debate is to be held on March 24th, 2009, between 11:00 and 15:00 in Warszawska Szkoła Zarządzania, ul. Siedmiogrodzka 3A, 01-204 Warszawa, in the neighbourhood of UKE.

Please submit your presentation suggestions by March 18th, 2009 and the Departament Techniki UKE, also electronically at numeracja@uke.gov.pl

Based on the submissions, UKE will prepare the plan of the debate.

The debate will be recorded. and the contents of written submissions will be made available on UKE's website after the debate, together with the debate's summary prepared by the UKE President.

Internet Society Poland wishes to thank Wojciech Pędzich for translating this piece.