Havana to host LACNIC 25

LIMA, Peru—Cuba will host a significant gathering of the regional Internet community next year.

The Havana Convention Centre will host the twenty-fifth meeting of the Internet Addresses Registry for Latin America and the Caribbean (LACNIC) from May 2 to 6, 2016.

"Havana will be the capital of the Latin American and the Caribbean Internet Community in May 2016," said Jorge Villa, manager of the national university network at the Cuban Ministry of Higher Education, told the Guardian.

The Cuban State Telecommunications Company ETECSA is the official host of the event.

Cuba hosted the fifth LACNIC meeting in 2003.

"This will be the second time that LACNIC flies to Havana for its meetings. It will be a great opportunity for the Caribbean community to participate in a better way in this community," Villa told the Guardian.

LACNIC executive director Oscar Robles made the official announcement at the end of LACNIC 23, held in Lima, Peru from May 18 to 22. The news was greeted with loud applause by hundreds of delegates, who had gathered for the weeklong conference to discuss questions of Internet governance and other issues affecting the evolution of the regional Internet.

For Cuba, it comes as the latest in a series of significant developments in its nascent telecommunications sector. Until 2012, most Internet users on the Caribbean's largest island had only had limited bandwidth via satellite connection. The Geneva-based International Telecommunications Union (ITU) ranks Cuba lowest in the Americas in telecommunications development. It says about 25 per cent of Cubans have access to the Internet.

In early 2013, the Cuban government opened several cybercafes, which have become the primary point of access to the Internet for local users. The Cuban public mostly has State-controlled Internet access in schools and workplaces.

Cuban officials have been promising better Internet service for years but have cited the U.S. economic embargo and political aggression as reasons for its stunted development.

The U.S. rapprochement toward Cuba in late 2014 came with added pressure for the island to hasten the modernisation of its telecommunications infrastructure. The U.S. made telecommunications equipment, technology and services among the first exemptions to the embargo after Washington and Havana announced last December that they would restore diplomatic relations.

In February, Cuba's First Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel pledged online access for all, and acknowledged that the country cannot develop without better connectivity to the Internet.

Following the Vice President's speech, there have been several positive developments in the form of digital literacy training centres, wireless hotspots and a project to increase access to fixed and mobile telecommunications services, Villa told the Guardian in an exclusive interview.

In March, New Jersey-based IDT Corp. became the first U.S. company to strike a long-distance deal with Cuba since the Obama administration's rapprochement. Previously, U.S. carriers were unable to make direct calls to Cuba and had to use a non-U.S. carrier for the final connection.

Later that month, a U.S. delegation travelled to Havana to explore business opportunities for U.S. telecommunications companies.

In May, French companies including telecommunications corporation Orange accompanied President Francois Hollande on the first visit by a European leader since Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez visited in 1986.

Caribbean "significant" to global Internet governance—ICANN

LIMA, Peru—A top executive of the non-profit that oversees all the Internet addresses has described the Caribbean as “significant” to the governance of the global Internet.

Rodrigo de la Parra, vice president for Latin America and the Caribbean at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), said the sub-region’s geopolitics give it “strategic” importance and the potential to punch above its weight on the global stage.

“If you look at the Caribbean in terms of population, it’s not that representative, but if you look in terms of the nations, it’s huge. It’s perhaps even larger in number than the rest of the Latin American region,” de la Parra told the Guardian.

The demographic diversity of the small-island states’ relatively small populations makes them “unique” and more representative than their larger, more homogeneous Central and South American neighbours, he said.

De la Parra was speaking in an interview during an annual gathering of the Internet community organised by the Internet Address Registry for Latin America and the Caribbean (LACNIC) in Lima, Peru.

The weeklong event was “an opportunity for stakeholders from the Caribbean served by LACNIC to update themselves with regard to current issues” affecting the region, said ICANN Stakeholder Engagement Manager for the Caribbean, Albert Daniels. Hundreds of delegates gathered from May 18 to 22 for talks on Internet governance and other issues affecting the evolution of the regional Internet.

Not only is the Caribbean quite significant, de la Parra said, but its significance is growing. The region’s resident expertise and capacity have been increasing substantially, in large part through the efforts of active agencies on the ground, such as the Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU).

“In terms of Internet governance, the Caribbean is an example to the world,” de la Parra said, adding that the work of the CTU has set the region apart.

“The Caribbean Telecommunications Union has been the leader in the world in the discussion of Internet governance. Even at the global level, there have been fewer Internet Governance Forums than in the Caribbean, and the CTU is leading these efforts.”

In addition to its Caribbean Internet Governance Forum, the CTU pioneered the Caribbean ICT Roadshow, which has become a global model for building basic digital awareness and enhancing advanced technical capacity in rural or remote areas.

To ensure the continued expansion and security of the Internet in the region, de la Parra said, bodies like ICANN must continue to work alongside the CTU, the Caribbean Network Operators Group (CaribNOG), the Internet Society (ISOC) and other key regional Internet organisations, such as the two regional Internet registries with responsibility for the Caribbean—LACNIC and the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN).

The two Caribbean RIRs collaborate on a range of initiatives to improve the regional Internet. In July, they are to host a meeting of Caribbean ministers with responsibility for Internet and telecommunications in Miami, as part of an annual industry conference held by the Caribbean Association of National Telecommunication Organisations (CANTO), a regional association of service providers.

The main goal of the meeting is to encourage high-level decision-makers to deploy the latest version of Internet Protocol, called IPv6. Caribbean Internet service providers have been relatively slow to adopt the new technology. Studies on Internet traffic show a global average IPv6 adoption rate of around five per cent, while the region lags at less than one per cent.

The current Internet Protocol, called IPv4, does not have the amount of address space necessary to deal with the rapidly increasing number of connected devices that send and receive information online. ARIN’s stock of available IPv4 addresses is expected to run out soon.

“We’re sponsoring a ministerial breakfast to do outreach on IPv6 targeted at the top-level—the ministers, the CEOs—about why it’s important to transition to IPv6,” said Leslie Nobile, Senior Director of Global Registry Knowledge at ARIN, told the Guardian.

The two RIRs work together in the region on an informal basis, driven by a recognition of the benefit of their collaboration to the communities that they serve, Oscar Robles, LACNIC Executive Director, told the Guardian.

“We met in some of the regional forums, and we realised that we were doing similar things, so we said, ‘Let’s coordinate.’ We said, ‘Let’s work together, rather than compete,’” Robles said.

Originally published: Trinidad and Tobago Guardian

ICANN chief to step down in early 2016

LIMA, Peru—The head of the non-profit group that oversees all Internet addresses will step down in March 2016. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) President and CEO Fadi Chehadé sent notice to the board on May 21 telling them that he would leave after an annual meeting to be held in Morocco in March.

Hours after the news broke on Agence France Presse (AFP), Chehadé addressed representatives of the regional Internet community gathered in Lima for an annual conference of the Latin American and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry (LACNIC).

He said that during the remaining 10 months of his tenure, ICANN would redouble efforts to give greater power to the global, multistakeholder Internet community of governments, businesses, organisations and users, so that no single entity would have the authority to determine the future of the Internet.

Chehadé has been overseeing ICANN’s transition away from the longstanding US-centred arrangement toward a more global oversight of ICANN's core responsibility for the Internet.

Chehadé had earlier commended the ICANN staff for moving the organisation from a predominantly US-based operation to a global institution with offices and relationships spread around the world.

At stake in the transition process is the control of a vital stake in the rapidly growing global digital economy, which could exceed 4.2 trillion US dollars by 2016, according to a Boston Consulting Group study.

“As the digital economy grows, the pressure to take control of things will grow as well, and it is incumbent upon us to show that we are prepared and mature and ready,” he said.

For the last 25 years, ICANN has been contracted by the US Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration to manage the assignment of Internet names and numbers globally. That collection of responsibilities is referred to as the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) stewardship function.

Chehadé's resignation will take effect shortly after the US government receives a plan to implement the transition of the IANA stewardship function to ICANN and the global Internet community, including Regional Internet Registries such as LACNIC. A release from ICANN said Chehadé would remain available to support the transition to a new leader after March 2016 as well as to advise the board on the IANA transition.

"I am deeply committed to working with the board, our staff, and our community to continue ICANN's mission as we still have much to accomplish,” Chehadé told AFP.

"I think this is the right time and the right thing to do.”

Chehadé has also also overseen the launch of new top-level domains, such as .google and .cricket. That process that has increased ICANN revenues under his tenure and brought the operations of the nonprofit agency under heightened global scrutiny.

Chehadé said he has accepted a job in the private sector, outside of the domain name space which ICANN supervises. He said he would disclose the name of his new employer later this year.

Originally published: Trinidad and Tobago Guardian