We just finished implementing a procurement for upstream. One thing we found with many of the really large ISPs is their poor support for IPv6. Few if any had IPv6 throughout their backbones.
Don't confuse poor demand with poor support. No company can afford to implement IPv6 in areas where there is no demand for it. As a result I think you will find that all the large network providers who supply IPv6 services are building out IPv6 as the demand rises. This is especially true of network using MPLS since 6PE only needs to be turned on for the few edge routers with IPv6 customers connected.
We should all be pushing our peers to provide a complete v6 service.
And those peers will ignore you since there is no business case to deploy IPv6 everywhere.
That's the only way it's going to be available when v4 space really becomes tight.
Not true. If a network provider has proven their IPv6 network design in the lab, and has a detailed plan for deployment, they will be able to get IPv6 out there in a matter of months. In addition, it makes sense to deploy the OSS and NMS support for IPv6 before turning it on in the network. This kind of activity is invisible to the outside world, but is essential in being ready for IPv4 exhaustion.
ISPs could start marketing themselves as "v6 ready" rather like was done for the millenium.
I have no doubt that we will see this in about two years, and some companies will suffer severe financial pain because they are not ready. --Michael Dillon