VietNamNet Bridge – CMC Telecom and FPT Telecom have complained about the lack of IPv4 addresses to develop new subscribers, saying that the reserved addresses do not correspond to the current growth and the broadband market share.

Subscriber growth rate down by 50 percent

Asia Pacific became the first region in the world which officially got exhausted in IPv4 addresses on April 15, 2011.

In fact, the address exhaustion was foreseeable, while the Vietnam Internet Center (VNNIC) told Internet service providers (ISP) to ask for the number of addresses sufficient to reserve for their network and customer development during the transmission period into using IPv6.

VNPT, Viettel and SPT, in cooperation with VNNIC have successfully asked for a large number of IPv4 addresses to reserve, about 15.5 million addresses, thus raising Vietnam to the high position, the 25th of the world, the 8th of Asia and the second in ASEAN, in terms of the number of IPv4 addresses.

VNPT, for example, with 48.63 percent of the broadband market share, has reserved over 7.7 million IPv4 addresses, or 49 percent of the total addresses allocated to Vietnam. Viettel, with 32.25 percent of the market share has reserved 5.4 million IPv4, 35 percent of total addresses.

Meanwhile, Hoang Minh Cuong, Director of VNNIC, said other telcos, which did not realize the importance of the issue, did not prepare well enough to develop their networks.

FPT Telecom and CMC TI, which hold 15.87 percent and 0.96 percent of the broadband market shares, respectively, only reserved 1.4 million and 41,000 IPv4 addresses, or 9 percent and 0.27 percent of the addresses granted to Vietnam.

Cuong said CMC TI, which now faces the serious shortage of IPv4, has petitioned to the Ministry of Information and Communication to ask for more IPv4 addresses.

A senior executive of CMC Telecom said the firm expects to develop 90,000 Internet subscribers by the end of 2013. He said if the IPv6 development continues going slowly, the subscriber growth of CMC TI would be lowered by 50 percent than planned.

Meanwhile, the representative of FPT Telecom said the modest number of IPv4 addresses left would make it difficult for the firm to develop new subscribers, but it would still manage to do this, while it would try granting IPv6 to new subscribers.

Address shortage blamed on overly hot Internet subscriber growth

Tran Minh Tan, Deputy Director of VNNIC, said the rapid development of smart devices including tablets, smart phones and the high demand has led to the high consumption of IP addresses and put Vietnam in the risk of lacking IPv4, though the number of IPv4 addresses granted to Vietnam was very big.

Tan thinks that the lack of the long term vision of the telcos has pushed them into a dilemma. CMC Telecom has admitted that it could not imagine the strong development and the high demand in the future.

IPv4 addresses were profuse prior to 2010, but the firm did not think it needed to ask for a high number of addresses, thinking that 40,000 addresses would be enough.

According to Tan, VNPT and Viettel have nearly used up the IPv4 addresses granted to them, and they have only a small number of unused addresses for reservation.

Buu Dien