Ger­ard Best

WILLEM­STAD, Cu­ra­cao–Much ink has been spilt and many hands wrung over how slow and ex­pen­sive the In­ter­net is in the Caribbean. The lat­est snap­shot from ICT Pulse, for ex­am­ple, is a re­minder of the price paid and pain felt by those sub­scrib­ing to re­gion­al ser­vice providers' fixed In­ter­net broad­band pack­ages.

But In­ter­net woes are much more than just a per­son­al in­con­ve­nience to in­di­vid­ual cit­i­zens. In fact, strength­en­ing the Caribbean's crit­i­cal telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions in­fra­struc­ture is a first step to grow­ing the re­gion's dig­i­tal econ­o­my. And an up­com­ing meet­ing of minds in the south­ern Caribbean could bring one im­por­tant piece to the re­gion's In­ter­net econ­o­my puz­zle.

Sur­pris­ing­ly, the event fo­cus­es not on hand­sets or SIM cards but hand­shakes and smiles. And per­haps pre­dictably, the key is some­thing called Peer­ing.

"Peer­ing is an arrange­ment be­tween two or more net­works to ex­change In­ter­net traf­fic be­tween their net­works with­out cost, typ­i­cal­ly at an In­ter­net ex­change point," ex­plained Bevil Wood­ing, one of the key ar­chi­tects be­hind the event.

"Peer­ing arrange­ments are key to the growth and de­vel­op­ment of the glob­al In­ter­net. The re­la­tion­ships be­tween con­tent providers and net­work op­er­a­tors are a crit­i­cal link de­ter­min­ing net­work per­for­mance as well as con­tent de­liv­ery costs," added Wood­ing, who serves as the Caribbean Out­reach Man­ag­er for the US-based non-prof­it Pack­et Clear­ing House (PCH).

PCH has played an ac­tive role in the es­tab­lish­ment of over two-thirds of the world's In­ter­net ex­change points. It has worked close­ly with the Caribbean Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union, an in­ter-gov­ern­men­tal body and with the Caribbean Net­work Op­er­a­tors Group, CaribNOG, to ac­tive­ly pro­mote peer­ing through­out the re­gion.

Yet, al­though more than 300 IX­Ps ex­ist in 80 coun­tries around the world, some with de­vel­op­ing economies do not yet have IX­Ps of their own and de­pend on im­port­ed In­ter­net band­width.So, why isn't there more peer­ing in the Caribbean, a re­gion that can hard­ly af­ford to haem­or­rhage scarce for­eign re­serves?

Wood­ing says when it comes to peer­ing, the Caribbean has made sig­nif­i­cant strides over the past five years, but there is still a long way to go.

"On­ly 20 per cent of what needs to get done to make peer­ing pos­si­ble is tech­ni­cal. About 80 per cent of it is more about so­cial en­gi­neer­ing. In the Caribbean, as in oth­er parts of the world, the no­tion of col­lab­o­rat­ing with com­peti­tors for mu­tu­al ben­e­fit is not al­ways re­flex­ive­ly em­braced."

Tack­ling the prob­lem head-on, Wood­ing, work­ing with his coun­ter­part Sh­er­non Os­epa, the man­ag­er of Re­gion­al Af­fairs for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean at the In­ter­net So­ci­ety, cre­at­ed the Caribbean Peer­ing and In­ter­net Con­nec­tion Fo­rum specif­i­cal­ly to bring ser­vice providers, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion reg­u­la­tors, pol­i­cy mak­ers, re­searchers and oth­er key stake­hold­ers from across the re­gion to­geth­er with in­ter­na­tion­al con­tent providers and In­ter­net or­gan­i­sa­tions, such as Face­book, Google and Aka­mai.

The re­sult was the first Caribbean Peer­ing and In­ter­con­nec­tion Fo­rum, or CarPIF at the Hilton Ho­tel, Bar­ba­dos.

"The aim of the fo­rum is to bring ma­jor ser­vice providers from across the spec­trum of the re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al In­ter­net ecosys­tem in­to one space to build re­la­tion­ships and ex­plore op­por­tu­ni­ties to strength­en the Caribbean In­ter­net econ­o­my," Wood­ing said.

For CarPIF's sec­ond edi­tion, ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al con­tent providers, re­gion­al tele­com reg­u­la­tors and In­ter­net ser­vices providers, will again meet, this time in Willem­stad, Cu­ra­cao.

CarPIF is an ini­tia­tive of PCH and the In­ter­net So­ci­ety , with the sup­port of the Caribbean Net­work Op­er­a­tors Group and the Caribbean Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union. The Am­s­ter­dam In­ter­net Ex­change is co-host of this year's event.

The im­me­di­ate goal is to ex­plore ways for Caribbean states to im­prove re­gion­al con­nec­tiv­i­ty and strength­en dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture. But the more long-term aim is to dri­ve tech­nol­o­gy-based in­no­va­tion and eco­nom­ic growth in the de­vel­op­ing re­gion.

Wood­ing and oth­er event or­gan­is­ers will be hop­ing that re­gion­al In­ter­net ser­vice providers will be will­ing to take a fresh look at ser­vice in­no­va­tion and ex­plore op­por­tu­ni­ties to con­tin­ue ad­vanc­ing the Caribbean In­ter­net.