We work together with Bangladesh Community to move IPv6 adoption forward: Jia Rong

Recently, Senior Journalist Mohammad Kawsar Uddin visited Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to attend the APRICOT 2025 & APNIC 59 conference. During the conference, Mr. Kawsar Uddin talked with Mr. Jia Rong Low, the Director General of Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) to know his views about various issues related to the internet community in Bangladesh, including the importance of IPv6 adoption, the need for diverse participation in technical conferences, and the role of APNIC in supporting the country’s internet ecosystem.

Jia Rong Low, Director General, APNIC

Jia Rong is an experienced senior leader in the Internet technology industry.

Prior to joining APNIC, Jia Rong established ICANN’s Asia Pacific regional office, where he spearheaded ICANN’s globalization strategy and oversaw its operations in the region as Managing Director, Asia Pacific.

During his 11-year tenure with ICANN, Jia Rong contributed significantly to the Asia Pacific Internet community and established key partnerships with Internet community stakeholders, government bodies, and regional institutions. Jia Rong also served on the Public Technical Identifiers (PTI) Board of Directors.

Prior to joining ICANN, Jia Rong served at Singbridge International, a Singapore government-linked company specializing in sustainable urban development projects. A former diplomat, Jia Rong worked for Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and served as First Secretary (Political) at the Singapore Embassy in Hanoi, Viet Nam.

Question 1: What is your observation about the overall Internet infrastructure and Internet Operational Community in Bangladesh?

Answer: Bangladesh is the second largest in terms of membership, and also our fastest growing membership economy. It’s surprising, maybe because we count direct members, meaning without counting the members of NIR such as CNNIC, VNNIC etc. Bangladesh’s rate of growth is very high. Hence, over the last four years, we did 27 workshops in Bangladesh. That’s a sizable amount of training. So if you combine the membership numbers, the amount of activity that we’ve been doing in Bangladesh, you can really see both the growth of the internet operators community, as well as the larger internet growth in Bangladesh, which also then contributes to various things like economic growth. There’s so many spillover effects that you can see. So I’m very positive, and I think this is, in some ways, just the beginning, and we are expecting a lot more growth in Bangladesh in recent future.

Question 2: What is your opinion about the participation of non-technical persons (policymakers, journalists, civil society) in technical programs like APNIC/APRICOT/ICANN conferences?

Answer: It depends on the platform. For example, in ICANN, this was a problem in the past. Now more policy makers are participating. There’s more policy discussion that’s happening now in ICANN platform. APNIC, I think we’ve also transitioned from very, very pure technical conversations, but today there’s actually more interest from both in terms of community members who are interested in policy. So one exemplary success story from Bangladesh is Shaila Sharmin being the co-chair of the Policy SIG. So it’s a very good example of more interest from community members who are interested in policy participating in very technical platforms like APNIC. But beyond that, it’s not just individuals. So increasingly, policy makers from the region, they also realize the importance. So actually, in the APRICOT conference, for example, we have a number of policy makers, like from regulators, who are here. So that also speaks to the increasing interest. Now in terms of journalists and the wider community, we have a number of tech journalists. So, including meeting yourself, I had a meeting with an Australian journalist yesterday, so we have some interest. But it really depends sometimes on what is the topic of the day. So if there’s, like, more interesting news, then they will be participating a bit more. Hence, it depends on the topic and also on who’s interested. So some people will think that the policy discussion on WHOIS is boring from some technical perspective, but the angle of that discussion today in the policy session was about WHOIS and Privacy. So it’s actually linked to regulation and policy linked to some legal aspects as well. So it’s very interesting that the different areas today on the internet are all overlapping.

Question 3: APNIC has a large number of members from Bangladesh. What are the APNIC regular activities for the Members? How Can APNIC extended more support for the members and Internet Operational Community of Bangladesh?

Answer: So like I mentioned, in the past four years, we did 27 training workshops, and a lot of the engagements right now are more focused on training.

So right now, the focus tends to be more on NOGs, and because it’s a straightforward platform. So the NOGs are like a platform that gathers the technical operators together, and then APNIC leverages that platform for us to engage. So it’s a straightforward platform that we can do and as it grows, as becomes more sustainable, and I heard a lot of good stories from Shaila, she mentioned, like, you know, through pandemic it was the participation rate has gone down, but now it’s gone up again, and I’m very positive about that too. So in terms of APNIC participation and support, we’ve focused a lot on that aspect, but on my side, we are now looking at how we can engage the community even better, to strengthen the relationship and to strengthen the engagement so it ties in with our Strategic Plan. So actually, I’ve just updated the strategic plan. I came in October and I reviewed it, then I worked with the team. Then we got the EC to approve an updated strategic plan that was in December. So in the updated strategic plan, amongst other things, on the engagement part, we’ve updated it to focus on three things. So the first is called knowledge exchange space. Now what does this mean is, like a complicated thing. So in knowledge exchange, what it actually means is, that APNIC has many platforms. So we have a blog, the blog has 100,000 views a month. Then we have ping, the podcast. We have a mailing list. The conferences are also platforms and support of the NOGs. These are platforms. How can we amalgamate all these platforms and bring the community together, instead of being separate platforms, having separate conversations, bring the whole community together and talk about challenges, trends, current issues, all the things that our network community is interested in finding a way to do that and strengthen that, and this is a broader strategy. Now, by doing this, we can strengthen our relationship and our linkage with the Bangladesh community. So it’s not only limited specifically to just a technical group, but it ties in with challenges like regulation, and new technology that impacts our space. So we could come up with, you know, the startup community could be linked to our community more than regulation, where policymakers will be part of that conversation. So we become a space where different stakeholders all participate together which will make the APNIC community much more vibrant. So taking that same broader strategy, we want to bring that to work with the Bangladesh community, and we can strengthen our relationship that way.

From my perspective, capacity building cannot be done for the sake of capacity. So what we want to do for capacity building would be, how can we make Bangladesh’s internet better? That would then realize the result of capacity building. So what I would like to work with the Bangladesh community would be now in terms of v6 adoption. So we have the, I think we moved from 2% to 19% recently. That’s very good, but that means that there’s a lot more space to grow. So how can we do training that contributes to moving that needle further? Right now, what I’m hearing is that the needle moved because the big players in Bangladesh adopted more training for smaller players, moving them to adopt IPv6. Because right now, what I’m hearing in the conversation is only the big players will move, but the smaller players will not. Is training the solution to adoption, or is it something else? So I don’t have the answer for that at this point, because there are also flip sides in some other countries where the big players don’t move because they have a lot of IPv4 so it’s a smaller player than so if we understand what this is, then we can move the needle on that. So if training then helps us move the needle, then APNIC will definitely do more of that training. But if it’s not, training is something else. Let’s work together to find out what that is. Then we put members’ fees to make the internet better. I think putting members’ fees to give back to them for activities is only part of the picture, but let’s work together and find how we can move the needle to make the internet better. So it’ll be v6 adoption and RPKI adoption, RPKI in terms of ROAs and also ROV, the validation. So we want to move to this area. Then we demonstrate how Bangladesh’s internet is improving. And I have this other vision, also, especially for developing countries. You know, when we have the internet that allows countries to leapfrog over the developments. So one small example I had, you know, in Singapore, we always get a lot of Western American media. So growing up, we always think, oh, America is very nice. America is great. And then Singapore, we started to have 3g and to us 3g then we took it. So after I was employed by ICANN, I visited Los Angeles. So I thought this would be like, Wow. Something is very advanced, very fast internet, faster than I can ever imagine. Then I arrived in Los Angeles and found how the internet is so slow. Because Singapore has leapfrogged over the US. And likewise, now I’m seeing some other countries in the region where Singapore, we think that we are doing very well, but I’m seeing them leapfrog over Singapore. And I have that same vision that when Bangladesh makes the internet even better, we can see how Bangladesh innovates using the internet and leapfrog over Singapore. That’s my wish for Bangladesh, and I’m hoping to see that happened.

Question 4: APNIC Member’s of Bangladesh now enjoy special discount for membership fee as least development country. This special discount fee may be changed to a regular fee in the next year or the year after the next year. But overall socioeconomic situation has not changed yet in Bangladesh. So, what is your plan for the membership fee of Bangladeshi members at least for the next 5 years?

Answer: So the policy is, if an economy is in least developed country (LDC) status, the members automatically get a 50% discount. So if the economy graduates out of that, that graduation is not decided by APNIC. So if an economy graduates out of that, then naturally, we follow the policy. There are two questions here, right? So the first one is, Will Bangladesh exit from the LDC status, as forecasted in 2027? I think I’m not able to answer that at all. The second question, then, if it does, what happens to the fee? So naturally, the discount will no longer apply. Now, it is a good thing if Bangladesh graduates from the LDC status, right? Because it’s testament to the economic growth that Bangladesh has experienced. So we should be happy about that. At the same time, if the membership discount doesn’t apply anymore, there are some smaller members who will be more impacted. We would extend our support in the sense that we can work with the members individually on a case by case basis in terms of the payment schedule, so we can adjust the payment schedule accordingly. But in terms of policy, once Bangladesh exits LDS status, then the discount no longer applies.

Question 5: Are you satisfied with the IPv6 deployment situation in Bangladesh? What initiatives APNIC can take to improve the situation?

Answer: So like I mentioned earlier, the adoption has increased a lot, which is very positive. And every economy is different. So in some places, it is driven by when the big players move, then everybody will move together. In some places, the government advocates for it and adds some regulation to support it. Then it moves forward also. Then the flip side is also true, like in India, Reliance Jio decided they will do IPv6. And then, because they did IPv6, then the number for the adoption for India is very high. So it varies from country to country. From APNIC we are always ready to support. So we have been doing technical training. Then, we should also work together and think about what are the other key areas that we can support, is it helping to talk to some of the C level, like CEOs of the ISPs? If we can lend our voice to it and work to raise awareness with them, we will be happy to do that. If it’s more training, then we are happy to do that as well. So it’s basically working with the Bangladesh community and identifying where the needs are, where the key levers are, then we work together to move adoption forward.

Question 6: Is APNIC having any communication with the government (Policymakers) to deploy IPv6 within the Government organizations in Bangladesh?

Answer: I’m looking forward to visiting Bangladesh, hopefully for bdNOG in May, and during that time, I hope to meet with the government as well, then we can have these conversations too. Then, like I said, you know, it’s having conversations with all the key community members and stakeholders. Understand the key areas that we can work on, then we focus our resources and activities there, rather than just doing training. This will help us focus on where we should put our resources in. So definitely, I’m going to go and see the governments and stakeholders and talk to them there. And you know, within the region, most governments are very supportive of IPv6 adoption. So that already lends a voice to that. Another key area also is we are seeing IPv6 adoption reach a level of maturity. I think this year, we are going to pass IPv6 adoption past 50%. So again, this is good news, so we can also use these points to share with the Government of Bangladesh. This will help to promote IPv6 adoption there.