Glob­al In­ter­net gi­ant Google has giv­en a ma­jor en­dorse­ment to the on­go­ing move to set up In­ter­net ex­change points (IX­Ps) through­out the Caribbean. Speak­ing at a spe­cial fo­rum on crit­i­cal In­ter­net in­fra­struc­ture or­gan­ised by the Caribbean Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion Union (CTU) in Bar­ba­dos, Marc Cran­dall, Google's se­nior man­ag­er of glob­al com­pli­ance, said: "Google sup­ports the pro­lif­er­a­tion of In­ter­net ex­change points glob­al­ly and we strong­ly be­lieve in the de­vel­op­ment of a ro­bust lo­cal In­ter­net ecosys­tem."

IX­Ps are spe­cial fa­cil­i­ties where In­ter­net ser­vice providers (ISPs) agree to ex­change lo­cal In­ter­net traf­fic be­tween their net­works at no cost. The CTU has been ad­vo­cat­ing for the pro­lif­er­a­tion of IX­Ps in the re­gion as part of its Caribbean ICT Road­show ini­tia­tive. Cran­dall ex­plained that Google sees IX­Ps as a crit­i­cal com­po­nent of the de­vel­op­ment of emerg­ing mar­kets like the Caribbean.

"Coun­tries can de­rive tremen­dous ben­e­fits when lo­cal In­ter­net traf­fic is ex­changed lo­cal­ly," he said. Google's po­si­tion was fur­ther sup­port­ed in the keynote ad­dressed giv­en by Bevil Wood­ing, an In­ter­net strate­gist with the in­ter­na­tion­al non-prof­it re­search in­sti­tute Pack­et Clear­ing House (PCH). He gave the au­di­ence a de­tailed ex­pla­na­tion of how the glob­al In­ter­net econ­o­my works and how IX­Ps can cre­ate lo­cal de­vel­op­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties.

"In­ter­net ser­vice providers must pri­vate­ly co­op­er­ate among them­selves to de­liv­er glob­al con­nec­tiv­i­ty, while very pub­licly com­pet­ing for cus­tomers on the ba­sis of price, val­ue-add ser­vices, and per­for­mance," he said. Turn­ing his fo­cus to the re­gion, Wood­ing ex­plained: "The cur­rent, per­vad­ing mod­els for In­ter­net traf­fic in the Caribbean dis­crim­i­nate against de­vel­op­ment of re­gion­al con­tent.

"The cur­rent sce­nario leads to the de­ple­tion of scarce for­eign re­serves from economies and so­ci­eties that can ill af­ford this he­m­or­rhage." Wood­ing ap­pealed to Caribbean ISPs and gov­ern­ments to draw ex­am­ple from the US, Cana­da, UK, Hong Kong, Kenya and Nige­ria, where IX­Ps have helped boost the do­mes­tic In­ter­net econ­o­my.

He al­so ex­plained how IX­Ps help with lo­cal con­tent de­vel­op­ment, pri­va­cy and da­ta se­cu­ri­ty by not "need­less­ly and ex­pen­sive­ly send­ing do­mes­tic-bound traf­fic across in­ter­na­tion­al lines." "The In­ter­net is crit­i­cal to the de­vel­op­ment of a mod­ern so­ci­ety. "Gov­ern­ments and In­ter­net ser­vice providers would be in grave vi­o­la­tion of their so­cial con­tract if they do not take the steps to en­sure that the cit­i­zens have ac­cess to the nec­es­sary in­fra­struc­ture and the en­abling en­vi­ron­ment to take full ad­van­tage of its promise."