The Board of the T&T In­ter­net Ex­change (TTIX) has en­tered in­to a host­ing agree­ment with Fu­jit­su Caribbean (Trinidad) Lim­it­ed, mov­ing one step clos­er to de­vel­op­ment of an In­ter­net Ex­change Point (IXP) for T&T.Fu­jit­su will be pro­vid­ing rack space and the IXP switch at its da­ta cen­ter in Barataria free of charge for four years, mak­ing a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to the de­vel­op­ment of crit­i­cal ICT in­fra­struc­ture for this coun­try.

Kurleigh Prescod, chair­man of TTIX, said: "We are over­whelm­ing­ly pleased with this con­tri­bu­tion by Fu­jit­su to aid in the de­vel­op­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go's first In­ter­net Ex­change Point, and we look for­ward to part­ner­ing with Fu­jit­su over the next four years and be­yond to make the IXP a suc­cess."Jean-Paul Dook­ie, ex­ec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness for Fu­jit­su, Trinidad said of the agree­ment: "Fu­jit­su's col­lab­o­ra­tion with the TTIX to es­tab­lish the Trinidad and To­ba­go IXP is a demon­stra­tion of our com­mit­ment and brand promise, 'shap­ing to­mor­row with you'. We view the TTIX as an es­sen­tial build­ing block to­wards the de­vel­op­ment of the Trinidad and To­ba­go knowl­edge econ­o­my, through the ef­fi­cien­cy en­abled for lo­cal con­tent cre­ation and col­lab­o­ra­tion, through this peer­ing point. By host­ing the tech­nol­o­gy in our ro­bust Tier III Up­time Cer­ti­fied Da­ta Cen­tre in Barataria, we are de­light­ed to sup­port these ef­forts and serve as the home for the IXP."

The IXP is a crit­i­cal com­po­nent of broad­band in­fra­struc­ture nec­es­sary for de­vel­op­ment of a knowl­edge-based so­ci­ety dri­ven by adop­tion of In­for­ma­tion and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Tech­nol­o­gy (ICT) and en­cour­age­ment of lo­cal­ly-host­ed In­ter­net ap­pli­ca­tions. It will in­crease the ro­bust­ness and pri­va­cy of lo­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tions be­tween end users, re­duce the re­liance on in­ter­na­tion­al net­work fa­cil­i­ties for ex­chang­ing na­tive In­ter­net traf­fic, and de­liv­er im­prove­ments in the qual­i­ty of In­ter­net ac­cess to con­sumers in T&T for ser­vices and lo­cal con­tent.

The T&T In­ter­net Ex­change (TTIX) is a non-prof­it com­pa­ny com­pris­ing the sev­en ma­jor In­ter­net Ser­vice Providers (ISPs) in the coun­try and has been es­tab­lished to set up an In­ter­net Ex­change Point (IXP) which will fa­cil­i­tate the ex­change of lo­cal In­ter­net traf­fic be­tween the ISPs. There are cur­rent­ly sev­en IX­Ps in the Caribbean in Cu­ra­cao (AMS-IX), St Maarten (OCIX), Grena­da (GREX), British Vir­gin Is­lands (BVIX), Haiti, St Lu­cia (SLIX) and Do­mini­ca (DANIX). TTIX is work­ing to­wards es­tab­lish­ing the IXP in T&T in the first half of this year.