Not really; they have enough to support 1-2 years of customer growth. After that, they have to do something.
C) Instead of spending money, the big players can make money by charging for something that is a scarce resource.
If you have N million addresses and N+1 million customers, charging more per address (i.e. raising prices) doesn't really help you; all it does is turn away the cheapest customers. I don't think ISPs are eager to try the Oracle business model of squeezing your existing customers harder instead of getting new customers.
Why do so few (none?) retail stores carry ipv6-capable routers?
Not really; they have enough to support 1-2 years of customer growth. After that, they have to do something.
C) Instead of spending money, the big players can make money by charging for something that is a scarce resource.
If you have N million addresses and N+1 million customers, charging more per address (i.e. raising prices) doesn't really help you; all it does is turn away the cheapest customers. I don't think ISPs are eager to try the Oracle business model of squeezing your existing customers harder instead of getting new customers.
Why do so few (none?) retail stores carry ipv6-capable routers?
Partly because they outsource the firmware to the lowest bidder and partly because the standard hasn't even been finalized: http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-v6ops-ipv6-cpe-router-...