Caribbean, Latin American Tech Experts Gather In Cuba, As LACNIC 25 Opens In Havana

HAVANA—Cuba is the capital of the regional tech world this week.

Some 700 technology experts and professionals from across the region gathered in western Havana on May 2 for the annual meeting of the Internet Registry for Latin America and the Caribbean (LACNIC).

LACNIC is one of five organisations worldwide responsible for managing the world’s Internet numbering resources.

This week’s meeting, called LACNIC 25, is one of the most important gatherings of the regional Internet community. Sessions will cover a broad range of topics, including cybersecurity, IPv6 deployment, regional interconnection, and several technical training workshops.

But the significance of the event transcends the agenda. The meeting is regarded as one of several signs of ongoing change that goes beyond Cuba’s nascent telecommunications sector. The Geneva-based International Telecommunications Union (ITU) ranks Cuba lowest in the Americas in telecommunications development. But Cuban officials have cited factors such as the U.S. economic embargo and political aggression as reasons for its stunted development.

Until 2012, most Internet users on the Caribbean’s largest island had only had limited Internet connectivity via satellite. 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.

LACNIC 25 is being hosted jointly with the Cuban telecommunications company, ETECSA.

“It’s great to be hosting everyone right here in Havana!” said Jorge Villa, manager of the national university network at the Cuban Ministry of Higher Education, on the opening day of the weeklong meeting at the Havana Convention Centre.

Villa was on hand at LACNIC 23 in Lima, Peru, when LACNIC executive director Oscar Robles made the official announcement of the venue for LACNIC 25. The news was greeted with loud applause.

It is the second time that LACNIC flies in to Havana for its meetings. In 2003, the city hosted LACNIC 5.

Belize Launches Caribbean’s Latest Internet Exchange Point

The Belize Public Utilities Commission announced that Belize’s first Internet exchange point, named BIXP, was successfully launched in Belize City on April 27 at the campus of the University of Belize.

The launch was the culmination of unprecedented collaboration between Belizean Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the highly competitive local telecommunication sector. The Belize Public Utilities Commission, the national regulator, facilitated the process, with support from regional and international agencies.

An Internet exchange point is a piece of physical infrastructure through which ISPs exchange traffic between their networks. Many ISPs in the Caribbean pass the data through faraway networks in the United States or Europe, before rerouting to their consumers in their own country.

The new Belize IXP was formally inaugurated in a ceremony attended by Patrick Jason Faber, Minister of Education, Youth, Sports and Culture and Frank Mena, Minister responsible for Public Utilities. Also present at the opening were John Avery, Chairman of the Public Utilities Commission, Bevil Wooding, Internet Strategist at Packet Clearing House, and Errol Cattouse, Chief Operating Officer, Centaur Cable and the newly appointed chairman of BIXP.

“For ISPs in Belize, having a local IXP means there is now a place in-country where they can come together to interconnect their networks and exchange local Internet traffic. This translates to cost savings for ISPs and increased network reliability for their corporate and residential customers,” explained Bevil Wooding, in his feature address at the launch.

“The new IXP is expected to help improve Internet service in Belize by eliminating dependence on international connectivity for local Internet traffic exchange. The new facility, the twelfth IXP to be activated in the Caribbean, will lower the average per bit delivery cost for local ISPs and significantly reduce the round-trip time for Internet traffic between local ISP networks. As a result, users can expect a more reliable, more resilient local Internet,” Wooding added.

His audience included representatives of Belize government, local Internet service providers, the private sector, the media and the University of Belize.

The BIXP launch is a major milestone for the telecommunication sector in the Central American nation. The country has ranked poorly by regional standards. The Belize Public Utilities Commission and industry watchers hope that the establishment of a local IXP can now catalyze the delivery of services based on e-health, distance learning, domestic data storage, video and audio streaming, e-government services, VoIP and other applications that depend on local traffic exchange.

According to Cattouse, the local exchange point is expected to serve as a hub for local Internet operators, a catalyst for innovation and the development of new Internet services in Belize.

The Belize IXP was established with the support of Packet Clearing House (PCH) and the Caribbean Network Operators Group, CaribNOG.  In the lead-up to the launch, PCH and CaribNOG successfully organized several IXP workshops attended by ISPs, government officials, computer engineers and the private sector.

Wooding, who has played a key role in the establishment of IXPs across the region, explained that with the proliferation of local IXPs, the Caribbean can now earnestly begin building applications that run efficiently across local networks.

“Initiatives to connect our schools, courts, police stations, health facilities, and government and business offices and to deliver local and regional Internet-based services now have a far better chance of being deployed without the frustrations that would normally be associated with bandwidth-intensive local applications in the region,” Wooding said.

He pointed out, however, that the launch of a new IXP does not guarantee ultimate success. More work has to be done, he said.

“Discussions have to be initiated to develop new country-level network services. This must include strategies and incentives for ISPs to upgrade the ‘last-mile’ of their networks in order to deliver improved speeds and quality of service to consumers and businesses. In this regard, we can look at the IXP launch a small but vital step in the journey toward the development of the Belizean and the Caribbean Internet Economy.”

Packet Clearing House, a US-based non-profit firm that has played an active role in the establishment of over two-thirds of the world’s IXPs, has worked closely with the Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU), an inter-governmental CARICOM organization, to actively promote the development of IXPs in the Caribbean.

So far, more than 300 IXPs exist in eighty countries around the world. Still, some ninety countries that are predominantly developing economies do not yet have IXPs of their own and depend on imported Internet bandwidth.

The CTU has also collaborated with CaribNOG, a volunteer-based community of network engineers, to stage technical workshops across the region.

Among the local ISPs participating in BIXP’s network are Alliance IP, Belize Telemedia, BroadBand Belize, Centaur Communications Corporation, NetKing, Network Solutions and Speednet.

Curacao To Host Second Caribbean Internet Peering Forum

The concept that Caribbean minds are best placed to solve Caribbean problems is hardly novel. But the idea is drawing new life from an unlikely source. The Caribbean Network Operators Group (CaribNOG) is an independent, volunteer-based community of network operators, telecommunications regulators, Internet service providers, special interest groups, government representatives and academics who come together regularly to share knowledge and develop new skills.

Bevil Wooding, Internet Strategist, Packet Clearing House

“CaribNOG is founded on the premise that the region is best suited to tackle the challenges and devise the solutions that it needs for its own development. Caribbean people are best placed to identify and resolve the issues affecting the development of Caribbean networks,” said Bevil Wooding, an Internet Strategist with Packet House and one of the founders of CaribNOG.

“And that is not to say that we simply do it all on our own. Of course, partnership and collaboration are also important.”

Wooding was speaking at the organisation’s tenth regional conference, called CaribNOG 10, which was held in Belize from November 2 to 6.

The weeklong conference was jointly organised with the Latin American and Caribbean Internet Address Registry (LACNIC), the entity responsible for managing Internet numbering resources in South and Central America and the Caribbean.

It was no coincidence that LACNIC decided to join forces with CaribNOG and co-brand the meeting as the second LACNIC Caribbean On The Move event.

“LACNIC and CaribNOG are both working to develop the technical capacity of the region, so that we can solve Caribbean issues and address Caribbean challenges. Our meetings are the perfect forum to draw attention to the technology issues affecting Latin America and the Caribbean,” said Kevon Swift, Head of Strategic Relations and Integration at LACNIC.

Among the LACNIC representatives taking part in the event were Security and Stability Manager, Guillermo Cicileo, and Policy Officer, Gianina Pensky. Their presentations were well received by both local and online audiences.

It was not LACNIC’s first collaboration with its Caribbean counterparts. LACNIC Caribbean 6 was held together with CaribNOG 8 in Willemstad, Curacao in September, 2014. And as Swift explained, for LACNIC the partnership with CaribNOG has strategic significance beyond the meetings themselves.

“LACNIC’s goal is to make the Internet a more effective instrument for social inclusion and economic development in Latin America and the Caribbean. And to do this, we recognise the importance of partnering with influential actors in the English-speaking Caribbean.”

More than 70 technology professionals from the Caribbean, Central and North America converged in Belize City for the jointly organised weeklong event, where much rich and lively discussions focused on regional cybersecurity and Internet development.

“This is my second CaribNOG in Belize, and I am always very heartened to see the excitement and enthusiasm of the technical community here,” said Albert Daniels, Senior Manager of Global Stakeholder Engagement for the Caribbean Region at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

Alongside ICANN, the meeting also brought together several major industry players in support of regional network development, including Microsoft, Google, the Internet Society the Caribbean Telecommunications Union and Akamai Technologies.

“I’ve been a participant in CaribNOG since the very beginning. This is my fifth or sixth CaribNOG event that I’ve attended, and each event gets bigger and larger and more noticed and more interesting,” said Martin Hannigan, Director of Networks and Data Center Architecture at Akamai Technologies, a leading provider of content delivery network services.

For its next event, CaribNOG will partner with the American Registry for Internet Numbers to conduct a weeklong event in Montego Bay, Jamaica from April 18-22, 2016.