Do­mini­ca be­came the lat­est Caribbean coun­try to es­tab­lish an In­ter­net ex­change point (IXP) when its three lo­cal In­ter­net ser­vice providers (ISPs) teamed up with the Na­tion­al Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Reg­u­la­to­ry Com­mis­sion (NTRC) and US-based Pack­et Clear­ing House to launch DANIX Wednes­day.

Through the launch of DANIX, In­ter­net traf­fic orig­i­nat­ing from one Do­mini­can ISP can now ter­mi­nate on an­oth­er lo­cal ISP's net­work with­out hav­ing to go through lengthy, ex­pen­sive, in­ter­na­tion­al routes.

"An IXP is a phys­i­cal piece of in­fra­struc­ture that al­lows dif­fer­ent ISPs to ex­change lo­cal traf­fic be­tween their net­works with­out cost," ex­plained Bevil Wood­ing, an In­ter­net Strate­gist with Pack­et Clear­ing House and a key tech­ni­cal ad­vi­sor for the ini­tia­tive.

Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor of the NTRC, Craig Nesty, de­scribed the oc­ca­sion as a "mile­stone that we should all be proud of", adding that the three lo­cal ISPs--LIME Do­mini­ca Lim­it­ed, Marpin 2K4 Lim­it­ed and SAT Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions, --"col­lab­o­rat­ed and co­op­er­at­ed for the greater na­tion­al good."

Do­mini­ca is now the sec­ond coun­try in the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of East­ern Caribbean States (OECS) and on­ly the third in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean to im­ple­ment the fa­cil­i­ty.

"With the Do­mini­ca IXP now es­tab­lished, fo­cus must shift to spark­ing new lev­els of in­dige­nous in­no­va­tion, lo­cal con­tent cre­ation, and in­dus­try growth," said Wood­ing, who has helped coun­tries in the re­gion with the IXP es­tab­lish­ment process, through the Caribbean Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union's re­gion­al IXP cam­paign that has led to the es­tab­lish­ment of IX­Ps in Cu­ra­cao, St Maarten, British Vir­gin Is­lands and Grena­da.

Do­mini­ca is al­ready ben­e­fit­ing from DANIX. The par­tic­i­pat­ing ISPs have all re­port­ed fast speeds for traf­fic mov­ing be­tween their net­works. They al­so not­ed that faster res­o­lu­tion of do­main name queries as a re­sult of the DNS Root Serv­er copy in­stalled by PCH on the is­land.

"We will now be able to serve some Google con­tent in­clud­ing YouTube videos from right here in Do­mini­ca. No longer will it be nec­es­sary for every sub­scriber in Do­mini­ca to down­load a YouTube video from some in­ter­na­tion­al source every time they want to view that con­tent," Mr. Nesty said.

He added that Ross Uni­ver­si­ty, one of the largest con­sumers of band­width on the is­land, is now ex­plor­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of in­te­grat­ing its mul­ti­me­dia con­tent with­in the IXP.

En­gi­neer­ing man­ag­er at Marpin 2K4 Lim­it­ed, Pe­ter Ban­nis said, the es­tab­lish­ment of DANIX is "a big step for us".

Min­is­ter for In­for­ma­tion, Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and Con­stituen­cy Em­pow­er­ment Am­brose George, set the DANIX launch in a wider con­text, as "an­oth­er ma­jor mile­stone in the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions lib­er­al­i­sa­tion process".

Min­is­ter George com­mend­ed CTU and PCH for their role in ini­ti­at­ing the process, and thanked the lo­cal ISPs and the NTRC for bring­ing DANIX to fruition. He said the suc­ces­ful es­tab­lish­ment of the IXP rep­re­sent­ed "op­por­tu­ni­ties...in con­tent de­vel­op­ment, cost re­duc­tion and bet­ter qual­i­ty of ser­vice to the in­ter­net eco-sys­tem".

The Min­is­ter en­cour­aged the NTRC to fa­cil­i­tate train­ing pro­grams for stake­hold­ers to bet­ter in­form them on the im­por­tance and ben­e­fits of IX­Ps.