Internet experts favour Guatemala exchange point

GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala -- Internet service providers in Guatemala have expressed a commitment to explore ways to work together to strengthen the local Internet. This significant step forward for the country's Internet landscape was facilitated by a regional technology conference held in Guatemala City from March 20 to 22.

Several Internet service providers attended the three-day meeting, called LACNIC On the Move, where they expressed interest in working together to establish an Internet Exchange Point, or IXP, in Guatemala. An IXP is a piece of Internet infrastructure through which the ISPs could exchange local Internet traffic between their networks.

Alfredo Verderosa, manager of the Services Department at LACNIC, said that the establishment of an IXP would be “a very positive development for the development of Guatemala’s Internet.”

LACNIC is the Latin American and Caribbean Internet Address Registry, a non-governmental organisation based in Uruguay. Since its establishment in 2002, LACNIC has played a leading role in developing a single, open, stable and secure Internet at the service of the development of Latin America and the Caribbean.

Guillermo Cicileo, coordinator of security, stability and resilience at LACNIC, said, “All Internet service providers, even fierce competitors, would do well to consider the superior benefits of working together for the greater good.”

A local IXP would improve the quality and cost effectiveness of delivering local web-based services to Guatemalan citizens and businesses, which is in turn a major benefit for local ISPs, Cicileo explained.

The IXP would also enable new forms of local innovation and entrepreneurship, allowing Internet users to capitalise on e-commerce opportunities, he added.

In other countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, IXPs have done more than address the inefficiency of local Internet traffic exchange. They have also allowed other important Internet infrastructure to be located in-country, such as domain name root services and content delivery caches from major content networks such as Netflix, Akamai and Google.

“We encouraged all interested parties to form an informal group and to continue to hold talks around the possibility of establishing the first Guatemalan IXP as a matter of urgent priority,” Cicileo said.

The next LACNIC On The Move event is expected to take place in Guyana in October.

Building the Caribbean internet economy

PHILIPSBURG, St Maarten—In the Caribbean, change is in the air. In fact, it’s in the cloud.

There’s a new conversation among the community of technology experts who spearhead Caribbean Internet development, and the buzz is no longer just about physical infrastructure. The architects of the region’s digital future are actively taking steps to strengthen the region’s economy by developing the Caribbean cloud.

“We have to look beyond basic infrastructure deployment, to developing the local content, services and business models that can truly benefit the region,” said Bevil Wooding, Internet strategist with US-based non-profit Packet Clearing House (PCH).

“Twelve Internet exchange points are already established in the Caribbean, and several others are being considered. While we continue to push for strengthening of critical Internet infrastructure in the region, our focus must also expand to development of the Caribbean Internet-based economy. We need to build out the Caribbean cloud,” he said.

Internet exchange points, or IXPs, are pieces of critical infrastructure that provide points of physical interconnection between the networks that make up the global Internet. PCH has played an active role in setting up more than two-thirds of the world’s IXPs and almost all of the exchange points in the Caribbean.

The non-profit firm has worked closely with the Caribbean Telecommunications Union, an inter-governmental CARICOM organisation that focuses on regional technology policy. Together, they have actively supported the proliferation of Internet exchanges in the Caribbean.

While establishing physical exchange points is necessary, it is not sufficient to advance the regional Internet economy, Wooding said. Another crucial step is needed.

“Getting the exchange points up and running is a start. But there has to be a shift in the conversation, from local traffic exchange to local content production, local application development and local innovation. What we want to see is not just more people on the Internet but more people actually taking advantage of the social and economic opportunities the Internet offers,” Wooding said.

“The private sector, academia and governments all have to work in sync to create opportunities for digital innovators and entrepreneurs to take advantage of the Internet and build on the local IXPs that now exist. We have to actively build the Caribbean cloud.”

Wooding was speaking as part of a panel discussion on developing the Caribbean Internet economy, held on the first day of St Maarten on the Move, a regional technology development conference jointly hosted by the Latin America and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry and the Internet Society (ISOC) in Philipsburg, St Maarten. from October 27 to 28.

He co-presented with Eldert Louisa, chairman of the Open Caribbean Internet Exchange and chief technical officer of St Maarten telecom operator TelEm Group. Karen Rose, senior director of strategy and analysis at ISOC, moderated the panel.

St Maarten on the Move was part of Internet Week St Maarten, a five-day conference coordinated by the St Maarten telecommunications regulator, BTP, and focused on developing the Caribbean Internet.

The week started with the twelfth regional meeting of the Caribbean Network Operators Group, which was jointly held with the LAC-I-Roadshow of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, from October 24 to 26. A broad range of technical, social and policy issues related to Caribbean technology development were covered in the three-day event, held with the support of the CTU, the American Registry of Internet Numbers and ArkiTechs.

Belize Builds Its Digital Dreams

HAVANA, Cuba—Errol Cattouse is a man on a mission.

He’s the Chief Operating Officer of Centaur Cable and the newly appointed chairman of Belize’s internet exchange point. Launched in Belize City on April 27, the exchange point is seen as a key component in the country’s growing technology sector.

For Cattouse and others in the Caribbean, IXPs also hold the promise of better network performance and greater options to innovate in the delivery of services to local consumers. But Cattouse already knows he can’t do it on his own. So he’s on a mission to develop the human resource capacity needed to bring the dream home. And he’s not alone.

Around the region, the investments being made in critical Internet infrastructure are creating a demand for expertise that seemingly outstrips current domestic supply. The growing Caribbean technology revolution can’t be completed until the region can raise up a generation of open minds and able hands ready to seize the opportunities and deliver on technology’s elusive promise. That’s what brought Cattouse and other Internet service providers from across the region to Cuba in May.

The capital city of Havana played host to the twenty-fifth meeting of the Latin American and Caribbean Internet Registry (LACNIC) from May 2 to 6.

“I’m here because in Belize, with our newly formed Internet Exchange, we’re looking forward to LACNIC helping us with a lot of technical support,” he told me, when I caught up with him between sessions. “We don’t have access to a lot of technical education and capacity in Belize, and we’ve benefitted of programs from the Caribbean Network Operators Group (CaribNOG) and the Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU) to help build our local capacity. This LACNIC meeting is part of our ongoing efforts to continue making connections with the regional technical community.”

He cited the Domain Name System (DNS) and Border Gateway Patrol routing (BGP) as two areas for which technical training is needed in Belize to get the most out of the new IXP.

The good news? Global, non-profit organisations like LACNIC, the Internet Society, Packet Clearing House, and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers are eager to work alongside Belize and others in the Caribbean to grow and strengthen the region’s internet.

“LACNIC is quite focused on building out training opportunities for the region,” said Kevon Swift, LACNIC’s Head of Strategic Relations and Integration, in an interview at LACNIC 25. “We offer workshops that cover everything from the basics of IPv6 to Address Planning and BGP Routing because we recognise that this level of knowledge or expertise may not always  reside in every territory at this time.”

LACNIC’s online campus already offers MOOC-style, self-paced courses, said Laura Kaplan, LACNIC’s Cooperation and Development Officer, adding that there is a plan to expand the curriculum to cover the kinds of topics that Cattouse and others are looking for, and to make it more friendly to English-speaking participants.

“What we offer is not just information but the opportunity to join mailing lists, make new contacts and  build relationships with other people who are also working in the same field,” Kaplan said.

Bill Woodcock, research director at Packet Clearing House, highlighted the work his San Francisco-based organisation has been doing in the region.

“PCH has been working closely with the CTU, CaribNOG and others in the region to support the proliferation of Internet exchange points and to help strengthen the region’s internet infrastructure.”

Woodcock and his PCH team helped set up the Belize IXP and are now actively planning with Cattouse to facilitate a series technical training workshops for Belize, over the second half of the year.

That is likely to reassure those, like Cattouse, on a mission to help the Caribbean move from the land of Internet promises, and into the Internet promised land.