The role of National Strategies in maintaining Competitive Edge in Information and Communication Technologies

This paper examines the economical impact of IPv6, Internet Protocol's next generation. Technically, IPv6 represents an upgrade, an evolution that offers the resources necessary for deeper and wider market penetration of the IP technology, to support the needs of a global economy, to build new products and new services. Politically and economically it has the potential of being a quiet revolution. Countries that trailed US into the information revolution recognize this opportunity to take a leading role in its next expansion phase and have developed national strategies to help better position their respective economies. Despite understanding the constraints imposed by the current version of IP, the private sector is currently inclined to largely ignore IPv6 because of its initial deployment costs and long term returns. Forced by high investor expectations to focus exclusively on the immediate bottom line it trades long term growth opportunities for short term benefits revolving around productivity increases. The paper analyses the importance of a National Strategy in driving IPv6 adoption and in closing a widening knowledge and deployment gap between US and countries such as China, Japan, Korea and the EU