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Friday, May 9, 2025

Bar­ba­dos to host first-ever re­gion­al In­ter­net peer­ing fo­rum

Google, Netflix to join Caribbean Internet service providers for historic gathering

by

20150514

If you live in the Caribbean, you don't need to be a com­put­er ex­pert to know that the re­gion's In­ter­net ser­vices need­to im­prove.

If your con­nec­tion fal­ters so of­ten that you've long since stopped call­ing cus­tomer ser­vice for re­dress, then you've got a pret­ty good idea about the chal­lenge­sof re­gion­al­con­nec­tiv­i­ty.

Or if you've ever tried to launch a web-based start­up, but have found your­self at a com­pet­i­tive dis­ad­van­tage sim­ply be­cause down­load or up­load speeds aren't cut­ting it, then you have al­ready have ade­cent un­der­stand­ing of why the re­gion needs more ro­bust In­ter­net in­fra­struc­ture.

No fur­ther ex­per­tise need­ed.

Of course, fix­ing the un­der­ly­ing is­sues that cause those prob­lems is an­oth­er mat­ter, re­quir­ing tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise, com­merce ne­go­ti­a­tions and a healthy dose of good old-fash­ioned col­lab­o­ra­tion.

That's pre­cise­ly the mis­sion of the Bevil Wood­ing, Sh­er­non Os­epa and a vol­un­teer group of Caribbean In­ter­net ex­perts go­ing by the name­CaribNOG. They are­be­hind the up­com­ing Caribbean Peer­ing and In­ter­con­nec­tion Fo­rum (Carpif) to be held in Bar­ba­dos from May27 to28.

The even­tIt will bring to­geth­er high-lev­el In­ter­net in­dus­try play­ers from across the re­gion and aroundthe world.

It marks the first time that­Caribbean In­ter­net ser­vice providers and ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al con­tent providers such as Google, Aka­mai and Net­flix, will be gath­er­ing in the Caribbean for this kind of in­ter­ac­tion,said Wood­ing, In­ter­net Strate­gist with PCH.

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As an out­come of the up­com­ing Carpif, re­gion­al con­sumers can look for­ward to a more sta­ble, re­silient, ef­fi­cient Caribbean In­ter­net, he said.

Grow­ing In­ter­net econ­o­my

Sh­er­non Os­epa, Man­ag­er, Re­gion­al Af­fairs for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean at ISOC, said "the fo­rum is a tes­ta­ment to the growth and ma­tu­ri­ty that has tak­en place in the Caribbean In­ter­net land­scape over the past few years."

He ex­plained that the meet­ing will ad­dress "strate­gies for en­cour­ag­ing and in­creas­ing lo­cal dig­i­tal con­tent de­vel­op­ment, and op­por­tu­ni­ties for con­tent de­liv­ery net­work op­er­a­tors in the Caribbean."

In­ter­net ex­change point (IXP) op­er­a­tors, in­fra­struc­ture providers, In­ter­net ser­vice providers (ISPs), pol­i­cy­mak­ers and reg­u­la­tors make up the list of reg­is­tered at­ten­dees for the event. The wide range of par­tic­i­pants will gain valu­able in­sight in­to "how the Caribbean can max­imise the op­por­tu­ni­ties that can be de­rived for greater in­ter­con­nec­tion and peer­ing," said Bernadette Lewis, sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the CTU.

That or­gan­i­sa­tion has been play­ing a ma­jor role in bring­ing re­gion­al gov­ern­ments in­to a greater ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the val­ue of cre­at­ing a healthy re­gion­al In­ter­net ecosys­tem. Strength­en­ing the re­gion's crit­i­cal In­ter­net in­fra­struc­ture is now wide­ly un­der­stood to be a nec­es­sary first step to strength­en­ing its In­ter­net econ­o­my, as on­line com­merce re­mains a large­ly un­der­ex­ploit­ed way for lo­cal busi­ness­es to de­liv­er lo­cal ser­vices for lo­cal In­ter­net users.


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