The Telecom Ministry plans to constitute a panel of consultants to review the progress of broadband services providers on implementation of new IPv6 Internet Protocol (IP) norms across the country under the overarching framework of the proposed New Telecom Policy-2011.

IPv6 will enable more flexibility in the allocation of IP addresses and routing of Internet traffic in the country.

In a meeting of central and state telecom officers to review the progress of IPv6 implementation, it was decided to constitute a panel of consultants to formulate a national IPv6 policy for the country, the Department of Telecom (DoT) said in a statement.

Earlier this month, Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal had announced that the government will initiate a framework policy for Internet service providers and notify rules for protection of data and fixing liability on service providers in case of norms under the Information Technology Act as part of a 100- day plan.

Security and law enforcement issues related to the adoption of IPv6 norms were also discussed at the meeting of telecom officers.

In July last year, the DoT had indicated that the unique IP addresses used to identify every computer and other devices linked to the Internet under the existing IPv4 protocol were likely to get exhausted by March, 2012, based on which it had released a "National IPv6 Deployment Roadmap".

IPv6 provides for far more IP addresses for individual users than IPv4. According to the roadmap, all government departments have to switchover to IPv6 by by March, 2012.

For this, all telecom companies providing mobile GPRS services and Internet service providers (ISPs) are required to migrate to the IPv6 standard by December, 2011.

As part of the roadmap, the government had also decided to form an IPv6 Task Force in a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) mode for timely implementation of IPv6 norms in the country.

The overall objective is to ensure the smooth transition of Indian netizens to the IPv6 protocol by March, 2012. This includes all central and state government ministries and departments, including PSUs.

IPv6 has already been adopted by the US, EU and Japan, among other countries.

Earlier during the day, telecom regulator Trai issued a consultation paper on "Issues related to Telecom Infrastructure Policy" to foster discussion on a host of issues related to infrastructure, tower sharing, radiation levels from towers and issues relating to the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 in India.