In­ter­net users in the British Vir­gin Is­lands will soon ben­e­fit from a faster, more re­silient ser­vice when the ter­ri­to­ry gets its own In­ter­net DNS serv­er. The Do­main Name Sys­tem, or DNS, is the phone­book of the In­ter­net. The BVI will be the first British over­seas ter­ri­to­ry and one of on­ly a hand­ful of coun­tries in the Caribbean to have a lo­cal copy of the crit­i­cal ser­vice.

The Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Reg­u­la­to­ry Com­mis­sion (TRC) has teamed up with US-based Pack­et Clear­ing House (PCH), a non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion, to strength­en the ter­ri­to­ry's In­ter­net in­fra­struc­ture. The equip­ment re­quired for ser­vice is be­ing do­nat­ed to the BVI by PCH. The chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the TRC, Guy Lester Mal­one, sees the de­vel­op­ment as an im­por­tant step in the evo­lu­tion of the In­ter­net in the BVI.

"The BVI was the first British over­seas ter­ri­to­ry to es­tab­lish an In­ter­net ex­change point. Now we are build­ing on that foun­da­tion by adding ad­di­tion­al equip­ment and ser­vices that will ben­e­fit In­ter­net users and busi­ness­es across the ter­ri­to­ry." Mal­one was speak­ing at a spe­cial meet­ing with PCH's rep­re­sen­ta­tive Bevil Wood­ing at the TRC of­fice in Tor­to­la. Wood­ing, the Caribbean out­reach man­ag­er for PCH, ex­plained that hav­ing a root serv­er in-coun­try brings sev­er­al ben­e­fits to lo­cal users.

"A do­mes­tic In­ter­net root serv­er strength­ens the over­all se­cu­ri­ty and sta­bil­i­ty of the In­ter­net in a coun­try. It al­so en­sures that DNS queries in the coun­try are re­solved much faster for lo­cal In­ter­net users. "Lo­cal do­main name lookups can al­so con­tin­ue, even if in­ter­na­tion­al con­nec­tiv­i­ty is dis­rupt­ed."

Busi­ness­es en­cour­aged to ex­plore

The min­is­ter with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for tech­nol­o­gy, Mark Van­ter­pool, stat­ed that de­vel­op­ment of the in­for­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy sec­tor is a pri­or­i­ty for the BVI. He en­cour­aged busi­ness­es and in­di­vid­u­als to con­tin­ue to ex­plore and utilise cut­ting-edge in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy that is ac­ces­si­ble in the BVI to en­hance them­selves and stay con­nect­ed world­wide.

"Whether it is fi­nance, tourism, health, se­cu­ri­ty, soft­ware de­vel­op­ment, or ed­u­ca­tion, tech­nol­o­gy touch­es every sec­tor. We strong­ly sup­port and en­cour­age these ini­tia­tives. The BVI is se­ri­ous about tak­ing its place in the dig­i­tal age." Wood­ing sup­port­ed the min­is­ter's sen­ti­ments, stat­ing, "Strength­en­ing lo­cal In­ter­net in­fra­struc­ture is a nec­es­sary and im­por­tant step to build­ing a strong In­ter­net econ­o­my. Busi­ness­es such as con­tent ser­vices, da­ta back-up, lo­cal stream­ing me­dia, tele-med­i­cine, and mo­bile apps can be based on and ben­e­fit di­rect­ly from these fa­cil­i­ties. E-gov­ern­ment ini­tia­tives can al­so re­ceive a boost."

He said, "En­tre­pre­neurs and in­no­va­tors have a re­al op­por­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate and grow In­ter­net-based in­dus­try in the Vir­gin Is­lands and the wider re­gion." Wood­ing is spear­head­ing an ini­tia­tive to strength­en In­ter­net in­fra­struc­ture through­out the Caribbean. The ini­tia­tive is backed by sev­er­al re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions in ad­di­tion to Pack­et Clear­ing House, in­clud­ing the Caribbean Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union (CTU), the Caribbean Net­work Op­er­a­tors Group (CaribNOG), the In­ter­net So­ci­ety (ISOC), and the In­ter­net Cor­po­ra­tion for As­signed Names and Num­bers (ICANN).

The PCH ser­vice will pro­vide the BVI with a copy of a name­serv­er with records for mo­ere than 100 coun­try code top-lev­el do­main names (such as .kn, .ag, .tt, and .jm) and a tech­nol­o­gy known as Any­cast DNS ser­vice. Cur­rent­ly, there are more than 240 root serv­er copies around the world, grouped in 13 clus­ters, op­er­at­ed by var­i­ous or­gan­i­sa­tions such as ICANN, VeriSign, and the US Army, Africa, Latin Amer­i­ca, and the Caribbean are some of the most un­der­served re­gions in terms of dis­tri­b­u­tion of root serv­er copies.

About the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Reg­u­la­to­ry Com­mis­sion

The Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Reg­u­la­to­ry Com­mis­sion is a statu­to­ry body re­spon­si­ble for reg­u­lat­ing the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions sec­tor of the British Vir­gin Is­lands. The com­mis­sion is al­so re­spon­si­ble for pro­mot­ing the de­vel­op­ment of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions through­out the Vir­gin Is­lands (UK). The com­mis­sion is gov­erned by the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Act, 2006, which was adopt­ed June 2006 and pub­lished Oc­to­ber 2006 and ad­vis­es the Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Works on telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions poli­cies in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and re­gion­al­ly and pro­tects the in­ter­ests of users of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vices.

About Pack­et Clear­ing House

Pack­et Clear­ing House is a non-prof­it re­search in­sti­tute and ed­u­ca­tion­al char­i­ty that sup­ports op­er­a­tions and analy­sis in the ar­eas of In­ter­net traf­fic and in­fra­struc­ture. PCH pro­vides equip­ment, train­ing, da­ta, and op­er­a­tional sup­port to or­gan­i­sa­tions and in­di­vid­ual re­searchers seek­ing to im­prove the qual­i­ty, ro­bust­ness, and ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty of the glob­al In­ter­net. PCH is head­quar­tered in San Fran­cis­co, USA, with re­gion­al of­fices in Lon­don, Trinidad, and Kath­man­du, Nepal.