Telefónica to participate in World IPv6 Day

Telefonica | June 3, 2011 | Press Release

Madrid, 3 June 2011.- Telefónica has just joined the ‘World IPv6 Day’ initiative, sponsored by the ISOC (Internet Society), aimed at encouraging the various sector players (Operators, Internet providers, hardware and software manufacturers and web companies) to accelerate migration and compatibility of their services with the new version 6 Internet protocol. Together with a significant number of leading Internet companies, Telefónica will take part in a global-scale trial on 8 June and will activate via the new IPv6 protocol the content of the following domains: www.telefonica.com; http://saladeprensa.telefonica.com;http://info.telefonica.es and www.tid.es.

When registering Telefónica for World IPv6 Day, Vicente San Miguel, the head of IT Systems at Telefónica S.A., welcomed ‘the chance to participate in initiatives like World IPv6 Day, which enable us to study the evolution and impact which a global test of this scale might have on our networks and services’ and highlighted that ‘Telefónica is already working to offer its services via the ‘Dual Stack’ model (enables the new IPv6 in parallel to the previous IPv4), and we would like to  encourage the rest of players in the sector to include migration to version 6 of the Internet protocol in their technical paths’.

The transition towards this new Internet addressing is just around the corner. Indeed, the global reserve of Internet addresses under the current version (IPv4) ran dry in April, after ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) assigned the last 5 address blocks. Accordingly, the Internet protocol must be gradually migrated to version 6 (IPv6) which will allow access to 340 thousand trillion trillion trillion public addresses, a mind-boggling figure, compared with the 4.2 billion addresses permitted by IPv4.

IPv6 was designed in the knowledge that not only do persons communicate, but so do new devices on a massive scale via the concept of the Internet of Things, involving smart household applications, connected cars or monitoring systems. As well as permitting efficient end-to-end applications, the new protocol introduces improvements in the areas of security, extensibility and mobility. These improvements look set to simplify the work of developers of Internet-based solutions, and will lead to more inter-active collaborative projects.

Telefónica: leading the main European IPv6 projects since 1999

For Telefónica, World IPv6 Day is the latest in a long track record of achievements.  Although its roll-out is only now becoming more widely known, Telefónica has been working on the transition to IPv6 for the last 12 years.  The Company’s first experience of IPv6 networks and services took place in 1999, within the framework of an international research project spearheaded by Telefónica R&D.

From 2002 to 2005, Telefónica R&D lead the Euro6IX (European IPv6 Internet Exchanges Backbone), the largest European IPv6 project in the telecommunications industry, and in 2004, Telefónica International Wholesale Services (TIWS) launched the first commercial IPv6 service and Telefónica Spain conducted the first trials with corporate clients.

Since 2008, Telefónica R&D has been actively involved in projects analysing the latest trends and possible applications of IPv6, as well as attending the meetings and discussions arranged by the European Commission and other significant bodies such as ISOC, OECD, IPv6 Forum and Red.es. We highlight the Company’s role in the discussion panel concerning the monitoring of IPv6 roll-out at the plenary session of the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force), held in Prague on 29 March this year.

About Telefónica

Telefónica is one of the world’s largest telecommunications network operators by market capitalisation and number of customers. It centres its activities mainly on the fixed and mobile telephony businesses, while its broadband business is the key growth driver underpinning both. It operates in 25 countries and its customer base exceeds 290 million globally. Telefónica has a strong foothold in Spain, Europe and Latin America, the latter region being the lynchpin of its growth strategy. Telefónica is a 100% private company. with more than 1.5 million direct shareholders. Its share capital consists of 4,563,996,485 ordinary shares traded on the Spanish stock exchanges (Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao and Valencia), as well as on the London, Tokyo, New York, Lima, Buenos Aires and São Paulo stock exchanges.