China: The State Council, or China's Cabinet, said Friday the government will accelerate the development of the next-generation Internet industry in the next few years and boost the sector's role in stimulating the economy.China aims to put the Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6)-based network into small-scale commercial pilot use and form a mature business model by the end of 2013, according to a statement released after an 
executive meeting of the State Council presided over by Premier Wen Jiabao. From 2014 to 2015, thecountry will deploy and commercialize the IPv6-based network on a large scale and achieve the interconnection between IPv4 and IPv6-based operations, the statement said. During that period, a group of international competitive research institutions and enterprises in the next-generation Internet sector will be established, it said. "The Internet industry's effect on boosting consumption, investment, exports and employment will be fully strengthened," according to the statement. China launched the construction of the next-generation Internet in 2003, featuring the IPv6 network as a key technology. The IPv6 network, first developed in the 1990s, allows a much higher theoretical limit on the number of IP addresses than the current IPv4 system. The IPv4 system provided only about four billion addresses, and they had all been used by February this year China's IPv6 addresses only account for 0.29 percent of the global total, lagging far behind other countries, Wu Hequan, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said at a seminar in June. Read Full: China to develop next-generation Internet system - China.org.cn
