PCH, Internet Society To Hold Third Peering Forum In Caribbean

WILLEMSTAD, Curacao—A number of regional and global Internet organisations have one important date circled for 2017.

The third Caribbean Peering and Interconnection Forum will be held in Sint Maarten on June 7, 2017 and the Internet community is already looking forward to it.

Referred to as CarPIF, the annual Forum is two days of meetings and deal-making specifically to promote regional Internet development. The first CarPIF meeting was held in May 2015, Barbados, the second in June 2016 in Curaçao.

Major global players look forward to these Peering Forums, or PIFs, because they provide a perfect setting for brokering new business deals in the various regional markets around the world. And the significance of the opportunity is hardly lost on Caribbean internet stakeholders.

This year, more than 100 key decision makers from across the region—including officials from internet organisations, telecommunications regulators and governments—gathered in Willemstad for the opportunity to meet with exchange point operators, Internet service providers and well-known international content providers, including Facebook, Google and Akamai.

“CarPIF 3 builds upon the success of the past two regional fora. The relationships between content providers, exchange point managers, telecom regulators and network operators are a critical to determining network performance, content delivery costs and, ultimately, the quality of service consumers receive,” said Bevil Wooding, Caribbean Outreach Manager for the US-based non-profit Packet Clearing House (PCH) and co-founder of CarPIF.

He announced the dates for the third CarPIF on the closing day of the second CarPIF event.

“We expect that the next CarPIF event will give Caribbean and international stakeholders a greater forum to forge relationships that will lead to a more robust Internet ecosystem in the Caribbean,” said Shernon Osepa, ISOC manager of Regional Affairs for Latin America and the Caribbean.

CarPIF is an initiative of PCH and the Internet Society (ISOC), with the support of the Caribbean Network Operators Group and the Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU), an inter-governmental Caribbean organisation.

BVI Pushes For Next-Level Internet Development: Internet Exchange Point Earmarked For Upgrade

British Virgin Islands is stepping up efforts to get the most from its internet infrastructure.

On June 4, 2011, BVI became only the second country in English-speaking Caribbean to establish an internet exchange point. Called BVI-IX, the exchange point was seen as an investment that would help the British Overseas Territory to strengthen its telecommunications infrastructure and encourage greater development of local digital content. Last week, BVI officials announced new plans to realise that promise.

“We are engaging in what we call ‘phase two’ now,” said Elford Parsons, chief technical officer of the BVI Telecommunications Regulatory Commission, addressing participants at the second Caribbean Peering and Interconnection Forum, held in Willemstad, Curacao, from June 7 to 10.

According to Parsons, BVI is now working with the Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU), an inter-governmental telecommunications policy organisation, and US-based non-profit firm Packet Clearing House (PCH), to develop their IXP to the next level. Over the coming months, technical training and workshops focused on network security, local content and electronic commerce will be organised to help the local market realise the expected benefits.

“We are pushing forward with phase two of the IXP in BVI. Our goal is facilitate greater development of local content and local services that take advantage of the exchange point. We also now have a third player in the market and we will be working with them to sign on and participate,” Parsons said.

CTU worked in collaboration with PCH to launch BVI-IX. CTU vice president and Minister of Communication and Works Mark Vanterpool, speaking at the official launch of BVI Internet Week in Tortola in September 2015, also noted the government’s desire to build on the BVI-IX.

“Here in the Virgin Islands, we understood the importance of establishing a local IXP, and we are happy to say that we have benefitted from having one of the very first IXPs established in the region,” he said but added, “more has to be done to realise the full benefits of this development.”

Dominican Republic To Hold Internet Week, Celebrate 25 Years Of .Do

The things you take for granted. You punch in a web address, and the page you were looking for comes up. Just like that.

You probably never stop to think about what really happens when you type in something dot something. And you shouldn’t have to, because “they” take care to that for you.

That second ‘something’—the part AFTER the dot—is called a top-level domain or TLD. And “they” are at the centre of a lucrative, global business of TLDs. You probably already know the popular ones like .com, .org and .net but the full list of TLDs is much more impressive.

Albert Daniels says entrepreneurially minded Caribbean folks should be tapping into the streams of revenue flowing around TLD registration and operation. He should know. He’s one of the “they”.

Daniels is the Stakeholder Engagement Senior Manager for the Caribbean at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), an organisation that promotes the expansion of the global Internet. For ICANN, a non-profit, business is booming globally. But when it comes to the Caribbean region, Daniels sees room for greater expansion. And expansion could mean significant business opportunities for Caribbean citizens with the savvy (and the capital) to step up to the challenge.

In a May 5 interview at the 25th meeting of the Latin American and Caribbean Internet Registry (LACNIC) in Havana, Cuba, Daniels said there’s plenty encouraging evidence of potential for growth but some challenges remain.

And a recent report by the Latin America and the Caribbean TLD Association (LACTLD)  stated that nearly all the country code TLDs in the LACTLD region showed positive annual growth rates, in spite of a general downward trend in the growth rate of domain names across all TLD groups. The report gave further insight into how country code TLDs like Anguilla (.ai), Aruba (.aw), Cuba (.cu), Curacao (.cw), Guyana (.gy), Haiti (.ht), Puerto Rico (.pr) and the Dominica Republic (.do) are all working steadily to overcome their unique challenges.

“The closure of 2015 shows a positive growth rate for ccTLD domains in Latin America and the Caribbean, with a balance of 8.3 million registered domain names. This figure represents an absolute growth of over 400,000 domains with respect to the endow 2014,” the report said.

From August 22-25, the Dominican Republic will be marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of its .do TLD as part of a four-day event called Internet Week. The event is organised by LACNIC, alongside ICANN, LACTLD, the Dominican Republic telecommunications regulator (INDOTEL) and the .do administrator, Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra.

Kevon Swift, Head of Strategic Relations and Integration at LACNIC, announced the event at the second Caribbean Peering and Interconnection Forum, in Willemstad, Curacao on June 9.

“We are very pleased to be going to the Dominican Republic for what promises to be a very productive week. We have a full agenda planned, with sessions covering a range of topics including cybersecurity and other technical areas related to the development of the regional Internet,” Swift said.

If you stop to think about it, next time you’re pasting a link into your browser, it’s actually pretty comforting to know that “they”—Daniels, Swift and all the rest of them—are out there working together to expand and strengthen the Internet in the Caribbean.