Ger­ard Best

T&T has come in for praise from the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty sup­port­ing the glob­al In­ter­net.Raul Echeberr�a, vice pres­i­dent of glob­al en­gage­ment at the In­ter­net So­ci­ety (ISOC) de­scribed T&T as "very ac­tive" in high-lev­el in­ter­na­tion­al de­bates on is­sues re­lat­ed to the gov­er­nance of the glob­al In­ter­net.

"ISOC has a long his­to­ry of work­ing in the Caribbean, and the Trinidad and To­ba­go com­mu­ni­ty is vi­brant in the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. There are peo­ple here who are very ac­tive in in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions that work to pro­mote the open de­vel­op­ment and evo­lu­tion of the In­ter­net for the ben­e­fit of every­one around the world," he said.Echeberr�a was speak­ing with the T&T Guardian at the ISOC's IN­ET TT Fo­rum at the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty (TATT) of­fice in Barataria.

The wide range of meet­ing par­tic­i­pants bore out the ISOC ex­ec­u­tive's words.Rep­re­sent­ed at the event were Pack­et Clear­ing House (PCH), the Latin Amer­i­ca and Caribbean Net­work In­for­ma­tion Cen­tre (LAC­NIC), and the Caribbean Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union (CTU), which is head­quar­tered in Port-of-Spain.

Echeberr�a al­so iden­ti­fied the In­ter­net Cor­po­ra­tion of As­signed Names and Num­bers (ICANN) mul­ti-stake­hold­er fo­ra and the In­ter­na­tion­al Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union's In­ter­net Gov­er­nance Fo­rum as ex­am­ples of the far-reach­ing in­volve­ment of T&T na­tion­als in the in­ter­na­tion­al de­bate.

IN­ET TT was ISOC's first IN­ET Fo­rum in the Caribbean. The lo­cal and re­gion­al tech­ni­cal fra­ter­ni­ty's high lev­el of par­tic­i­pa­tion in in­ter­na­tion­al de­bates must con­tin­ue, Echeberr�a said, to en­sure that Caribbean users of the In­ter­net con­tin­ue to en­joy open ac­cess to the In­ter­net and free­dom of on­line ex­pres­sion.He warned that in T&T and oth­er coun­tries, po­lit­i­cal in­ter­ests could threat­en the ba­sic prin­ci­ples of free­dom of in­for­ma­tion and free­dom of ex­pres­sion.

"There are some chal­lenges from the po­lit­i­cal side. There are some gov­ern­ments that think that they should have more con­trol of the In­ter­net, even mo­ti­vat­ed by very un­der­stand­able ob­jec­tives like to fight cy­ber­crime. But we con­tin­ue push­ing for an In­ter­net that is free for every­body so that ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion is not re­strict­ed and free­dom of ex­pres­sion is not re­pressed," he said."We think that the In­ter­net should be a tool for im­prov­ing the way that peo­ple ex­er­cise hu­man rights."

Se­basti�n Bel­lagam­ba, ISOC re­gion­al bu­reau di­rec­tor for Latin Amer­i­ca and The Caribbean, al­so high­light­ed the im­por­tance of keep­ing the evo­lu­tion of the In­ter­net open."ISOC is not pur­su­ing tech­nol­o­gy for the sake of tech­nol­o­gy. We strong­ly be­lieve in the ca­pa­bil­i­ty of the In­ter­net to im­prove peo­ple's qual­i­ty of life," Bel­lagam­ba said.

"When we have na­tion­al IN­ETs, like this one in Trinidad and To­ba­go, our goal is to bring some ex­per­tise from ISOC and the in­ter­na­tion­al tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ty but al­so to learn from the lo­cal com­mu­ni­ty, to en­rich the glob­al de­bate on rel­e­vant is­sues such as In­ter­net gov­er­nance. That's the way that we be­lieve in mov­ing things for­ward. It's the In­ter­net mod­el," he said.

About 50 stake­hold­ers from dif­fer­ent sec­tors gath­ered for the two-day event. Be­yond the tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ty, the event brought to­geth­er gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, aca­d­e­m­ic re­searchers, non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions and pri­vate sec­tor com­pa­nies.Par­tic­i­pants used the fo­rum to find out more about im­por­tant tech­nol­o­gy-re­lat­ed is­sues such as In­ter­net gov­er­nance, on­line iden­ti­ty and pri­va­cy, cy­ber se­cu­ri­ty, mo­bile broad­band con­nec­tiv­i­ty, and the de­ploy­ment of the new In­ter­net Pro­to­col (IPv6).