Cherisse Moe

A broad­band fi­bre op­tic net­work called C@rib­NET has been launched to con­nect ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tions, schools, hos­pi­tals and oth­er ed­u­ca­tion­al es­tab­lish­ments to knowl­edge de­vel­op­ment and re­search plat­forms, paving the way for en­hanced in­ter­con­nec­tiv­i­ty and col­lab­o­ra­tion among Caribbean states.

The his­toric launch took place at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts Cen­tre (NA­PA), Port-of-Spain, on Feb­ru­ary 26 un­der the theme, Col­lab­o­ra­tion, Co-op­er­a­tion, Com­mu­ni­ty.

The Caribbean Re­search and Ed­u­ca­tion­al Net­work (C@rib­NET) serves ap­prox­i­mate­ly 26 mil­lion peo­ple in 21 coun­tries who ben­e­fit from cost-ef­fec­tive ac­cess to high qual­i­ty e-learn­ing con­tent and oth­er knowl­edge re­sources from the re­gion and around the world.

The net­work, which costs 10 mil­lion eu­ros, was fi­nanced by the Eu­ro­pean Union and is con­nect­ed to the world's re­search and ed­u­ca­tion com­mu­ni­ty through AM­PATH to North Amer­i­ca, Geant to Eu­rope and Red­CLARA to Latin Amer­i­ca.

The launch at­tract­ed dis­tin­guished lead­ers, re­gion­al stake­hold­ers and spon­sors and brought to­geth­er rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Caribbean Na­tion­al Re­search and Ed­u­ca­tion Net­works, lead­er­ship from the aca­d­e­m­ic and re­search com­mu­ni­ty, the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com), gov­ern­ment, as well as rep­re­sen­ta­tives from in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners in Africa, North Amer­i­ca, Latin Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope.

Cari­com man­dat­ed the es­tab­lish­ment of C@rib­NET to be co-or­di­nat­ed and man­aged by the Caribbean Knowl­edge and Learn­ing Net­work; a re­gion­al or­gan­i­sa­tion es­tab­lished in 2012 to pro­vide ac­cess to af­ford­able dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies for build­ing ex­cel­lence in aca­d­e­m­ic train­ing, re­search and in­no­va­tion, di­ver­si­ty and glob­al en­gage­ment.

"C@rib­NET has been a project that's been long in com­ing in terms of the scope that it has for the Caribbean," said chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer, LIME Caribbean, Chris Dehring.

LIME is the name giv­en to the Caribbean prop­er­ties owned by Ca­ble and Wire­less Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, the Lon­don-based, in­ter­na­tion­al telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions provider.

Dehring said C@rib­NET has the po­ten­tial to pro­mote eco­nom­ic growth through­out the re­gion and called for re­gion­al gov­ern­ment and pri­vate sec­tor sup­port to en­sure the net­work re­alis­es its full po­ten­tial.

"More fo­cus is need­ed if ed­u­ca­tion is go­ing to be the key to un­lock the po­ten­tial of this re­gion, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the cre­ative in­dus­try," he said.

"The pri­vate sec­tor needs to get in­volved be­cause, at the end of the day, the pri­vate sec­tor ben­e­fits the most from these types of net­works. It's an eco-sys­tem and the Gov­ern­ment and every mem­ber have a part to play."

Not­ing that on­ly about 26 per cent of Caribbean na­tion­als have high-speed broad­band In­ter­net con­nec­tiv­i­ty, Dehring said there was al­so need for bet­ter col­lab­o­ra­tion to over­come such chal­lenges.

"When you com­pare it to North Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope, which is up in the 70s and 80s, you can't help but think that the low pen­e­tra­tion of In­ter­net is part of the rea­son why we are not pro­gress­ing eco­nom­i­cal­ly as we should," he stat­ed.

"What that al­so speaks to is the af­ford­abil­i­ty of broad­band. We need to ad­dress this."

Min­is­ter of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing, Fazal Karim, who was present at the launch, echoed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments.

The min­is­ter said C@rib­NET sig­nals a par­a­digm shift in the realm of high­er learn­ing and ed­u­ca­tion in the re­gion. He said sev­en months ago, T&T launched the Caribbean's first op­er­a­tional Na­tion­al Re­search and Ed­u­ca­tion Net­works called The T&T Re­search and Ed­u­ca­tion Net­work (TRENT).

This net­work con­nects three of the coun­try's largest ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tions, in­clud­ing the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, the Col­lege of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ap­plied Arts (Costatt) and the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T.

Not­ing that the Gov­ern­ment was al­so tak­ing steps to launch its High­er Ed­u­ca­tion Re­search Agen­da, Karim said, "I make a ral­ly call to­day that we must in­te­grate a greater pool of both pub­lic and pri­vate re­search in­sti­tu­tion in­to TRENT. I take this op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­vite all pri­vate and pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions in T&T to come on board and pro­lif­er­ate the ben­e­fits of this mode of learn­ing through­out our na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty."

Con­nect­ing peo­ple across is­lands

Prof Emer­i­tus Er­rol Miller stat­ed that C@rib­NET is a step in the right di­rec­tion as it would serve to bet­ter con­nect like-mind­ed peo­ple across the Caribbean with­out them hav­ing to leave their re­spec­tive is­lands.

"I see col­lab­o­ra­tion and con­nec­tion in learn­ing in­volv­ing stu­dents and teach­ers and prin­ci­pals in schools, in ur­ban and rur­al ar­eas with­in their coun­tries, in oth­er is­lands, be­tween col­leges and across the re­gion," said Pro­fes­sor Miller.

"I see C@rib­NET as a plat­form of con­nec­tion of Caribbean peo­ple who in their for­ma­tive years will par­tic­u­lar­ly use the vir­tu­al on­line space to form in­ter-is­land friend­ships and cross-coun­try study groups...I see the con­vey­ing of Caribbean con­scious­ness and Caribbean civil­i­sa­tion and cul­ture."

The launch al­so en­gen­dered thought-pro­vok­ing ple­nary ses­sions, pan­el dis­cus­sions, and a va­ri­ety of live and vir­tu­al pre­sen­ta­tions, fa­cil­i­tat­ing an ex­change of in­for­ma­tion and ideas. Par­tic­i­pants were giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to dis­cuss is­sues re­lat­ing to NREN de­vel­op­ment, e-In­fra­struc­ture, con­tent man­age­ment, open repos­i­to­ries and oth­er plat­forms that can sup­port the strength­en­ing of Caribbean NRENS and spe­cif­ic com­mu­ni­ties of in­ter­est.

Through a ses­sion ti­tled, Plat­forms for Col­lab­o­ra­tive Re­search and Ed­u­ca­tion, the im­por­tance of e-In­fra­struc­tures to the re­search com­mu­ni­ty was un­der­scored. E-in­fra­struc­tures de­fine a glob­al co­op­er­a­tion mod­el be­ing de­vel­oped by re­search and ed­u­ca­tion or­gan­i­sa­tions usu­al­ly on top of high speed fi­bre op­ti­cal back­bone con­nec­tions.

More on NRENs

NRENs are ed­u­ca­tion and re­search col­lab­o­ra­tions at the na­tion­al lev­el that are fa­cil­i­tat­ed by high-speed broad­band con­nec­tions among part­ner in­sti­tu­tions. There are nine in the Cari­com re­gion.

In­vari­ably, the mem­bers of an NREN are providers of high­er ed­u­ca­tion and re­search in­sti­tu­tions, but may in­clude teach­ing hos­pi­tals, mu­se­ums, li­braries and schools. The gen­er­al pur­pose of NRENs is to bring the dif­fer­ent in­sti­tu­tions to­geth­er to share hu­man knowl­edge, con­tent, fa­cil­i­ties and net­work­ing re­sources; lob­by pol­i­cy­mak­ers and reg­u­la­tors and at­tain economies of scale for large vol­ume pro­cure­ment of band­width and equip­ment.

Specif­i­cal­ly NRENs:

�2 Pro­vide mem­bers with sta­ble high speed trans­port net­works; sep­a­rat­ing aca­d­e­m­ic traf­fic from com­mer­cial (com­mod­i­ty) traf­fic; and there­by cre­at­ing non-com­mer­cial net­works for re­search and ed­u­ca­tion and fast links be­tween mem­ber cam­pus­es;

�2 En­sure ad­vanced net­work­ing traf­fic is not dis­abled by con­ges­tion from com­mod­i­ty-type traf­fic;

�2 Cre­ate con­nec­tiv­i­ty to oth­er re­search and ed­u­ca­tion net­works world­wide;

�2 Cre­ate a com­mu­ni­ty of ed­u­ca­tion and re­search net­work ac­tors to fa­cil­i­tate the ex­change of ex­pe­ri­ence and knowl­edge on di­verse net­work­ing is­sues;

�2 En­cour­age broad par­tic­i­pa­tion of mem­ber in­sti­tu­tions in shar­ing con­tent, such as li­braries and learn­ing ma­te­ri­als;

�2 Pro­mote re­search in­to high per­for­mance net­work tech­nolo­gies and de­vel­op next gen­er­a­tion net­work­ing and ap­pli­ca­tions in re­search and high­er ed­u­ca­tion.