The government’s intention to introduce Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) in the country was made clear by the road map released on Wednesday. A task force in Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode will be set up to guide the transition from IPv4 to IPv6, which the government has pledged to carry out in a time bound manner.

The switch over to the latest technology has become essential, as the initial version of address platform, IPv4, is at present overloaded with 18.4 million registered addresses in India and will run out of space by March 2012. With the rollout of 3G and BWA services, for which spectrum auctions were conducted recently, the deficit is bound to become more acute.

IPv6 offers a larger address space than the current IPv4, as it uses 128-bit address as compared to the limited addressing space of only 32 bits in IPv4.

Minister of Communications & Information Technology A Raja said during the road map release that the government has initiated action at the right time and all stakeholders should make a concerted effort to migrate to the higher platform. To this end, all Telecom and Internet Service providers need to become IPv6-compliant by December 2011 and should offer IPv6 services thereafter, the Press Information Bureau statement reveals.

Sachin Pilot, Minister of State for Communications & Information Technology, said during the release that IPv4 has served well for the last 25 years, but with Internet Protocol emerging as the global standard for communication, it is facing practical limitations. The new IPv6 will offer unlimited addresses in addition to a host of new, advanced features, vital for running future communication networks.

The National IPv6 Deployment Roadmap was developed by the Telecommunication Engineering Centre (TEC), the technical arm of the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) after conducting various workshops all over the country for the past one year.

Infosys Technologies, the leader of Indian IT industry, released figures for the first quarter on Tuesday. In the June-ending quarter, the IT hotshot’s net profit dropped despite rise in revenues due to rupee appreciation and increasing wages. This resulted in its share prices taking a tumble on Tuesday, bringing down with it other IT stocks.

The IT major posted revenue of Rs 6,198 crore for the quarter, up 13.3% from Q1 of last fiscal, when the revenue was Rs 5,472 crore. However, the net profit took a beating, from Rs 1,525 crore to Rs 1,488 crore, a drop of 2.4%. Operating margin too witnessed a decline of 1.8%.

Despite profits dipping, the company is optimistic about the deal pipeline and customer spends in the coming days. Though the increase in revenue is the highest since Q2 of 2007-08, the company conceded that there are hurdles in the path ahead, the most vital being the uncertainty in Europe and its impact on global economy.

“There are clouds in the horizon. I hope they are only rain clouds and will not bring cyclones. Anyway, we are famous for weathering all kinds of storms,” said Kris Gopalakrishnan, CEO, Infosys. “While the global economic environment remains uncertain, we continue to see greater demand for services from our clients. The challenge for the industry is to enhance investment to grow the business, and yet be cautious.”

The company has raised its dollar revenue guidance from 16-18% to 19-21%. Infosys expects its revenue for the next quarter to be in the range of $1,413-1,427 million, up 22.4%-23.75% on year-on-year basis. The revenue outlook for the whole year is in the range of $5.72-5.81 billion.

Security concerns has prompted government to direct Department of Telecom (DoT) to issue directives to the concerned firms to comply with security laws of the country. At present the security agencies are reporting difficulty in deciphering messages sent through BlackBerry, Skype and Gmail services.

In 2008, government had issued similar directives to BlackBerry and threatened to ban its services. Later, the issue was resolved amicably with all security concerns related to the services addressed. The latest government move is surprising in this context.

A recent meeting of Indian security agencies had raised the issue of the three services, which they said pose threat to national security in their present formats. The agencies are facing difficulty in unscrambling the messages sent through the services. They fear that these services may be misused by terrorists to dodge monitoring by security agencies.

BlackBerry phones use codes with an encryption of 256 bits. This scrambles the messages before sending them. Later the messages are unscrambled at the receiving handset. BlackBerry maker, Canada-based Research in Motion (RIM) will be given 15 days for compliance. Skype Services is also expected to receive a similar communication from DoT. Both services may be banned or blocked in the country, if they fail to comply within the deadline.

However, in the case of Google, timeframe may not be insisted, but asked to ensure that the encryption for Gmail Services is in a format that can be deciphered by security agencies.

The said communications to the three firms are believed to be dispatched in the first week of July.

A multilingual service desk facility will be set up by HCL Technologies in Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. An announcement to this effect was made by the company on Wednesday. The Indian outsourcing company recently completed a year of operation in the Latin American country.

The center is being launched to provide helpdesk support as a part of the Infrastructure Services Division for network monitoring, information security, mainframe management and data center management. It will also offer support for telecom and mainframe customers in Latin America and Europe. To staff the facility, HCL has already hired 150 locals, fluent in Portuguese and Spanish.

R Srikrishna, executive vice president, HCL Technologies (Infrastructure Services Division) said during an interactive session with CIOL, “Brazil is the eighth largest IT and IT enabled services market in the world. Brazilian market is estimated to be around $15 billion for IT and ITES.” He added, “According to a Gartner report, half of the contract for IT/ITES in Brazil is not renewed with the same company due to a variety of reasons. We see huge opportunity for us in this market. Though the contracts are not renewed every year, as it may be spread over five years, we see huge opportunities in securing the contracts that are missed by other companies.”

Mr. Srikrishna said that this is a logical step for HCL Technologies, as the company is already present in the top seven IT markets. “Our entry into Brazil is in line with our strategy to penetrate into the Latin American market. Brazil is a starting point for us in this region,” he said.

Cost-wise, India is cheaper by 30-40%, though the Brazilian facility is much cheaper than the US or the UK. However, having service facility in Brazil has its own advantages including superior service to clients of the region.