Ger­ard Best

WILLEM­STAD, Cu­ra�ao-Fail­ing to con­vert bril­liant busi­ness ideas to re­al re­turns is cost­ing on­line en­tre­pre­neurs big time. That's why in the Caribbean, stake­hold­ers are start­ing to pay clos­er at­ten­tion to ex­ter­nal fac­tors im­pact­ing their bot­tom line.

One such fac­tor is the un­der­de­vel­op­ment of crit­i­cal In­ter­net in­fra­struc­ture in the re­gion. Across the Caribbean, lo­cal In­ter­net ser­vice providers (ISPs) are pay­ing over­seas car­ri­ers to ex­change lo­cal In­ter­net traf­fic be­tween their lo­cal net­works. This is an un­nec­es­sar­i­ly cost­ly and in­ef­fi­cient way of han­dling in-coun­try ex­change of In­ter­net traf­fic. And nat­u­ral­ly, that ex­pense and in­con­ve­nience are borne by the end-user.

But there is a bet­ter way, ac­cord­ing to Kurleigh Prescod, Vice Pres­i­dent of Net­work and ICT Ser­vices for the south­ern Caribbean at Colum­bus Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, a ma­jor play­er in the re­gion­al telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions land­scape.

Speak­ing at the 9th Caribbean In­ter­net Gov­er­nance Fo­rum (CIGF) held at the Cu­ra­cao World Trade Cen­tre on Sep­tem­ber 11, Prescod ac­knowl­edged that the re­gion was heav­i­ly de­pen­dent on for­eign in­fra­struc­ture for In­ter­net ac­cess, es­pe­cial­ly U.S. in­fra­struc­ture. But he shared valu­able in­sights on how Colum­bus was re­spond­ing to the re­gion­al chal­lenge.

Cit­ing the ex­am­ple of Grena­da, Prescod iden­ti­fied the is­land's In­ter­net Ex­change Point (IXP) as a key com­po­nent of the crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture that al­lowed Colum­bus to work with oth­er ISPs to ex­change lo­cal In­ter­net traf­fic be­tween their net­works with­out cost. Through the IXP, In­ter­net traf­fic orig­i­nat­ing in Grena­da now ter­mi­nates on oth­er lo­cal net­works with­out hav­ing to go through lengthy, ex­pen­sive, in­ter­na­tion­al routes, he said.

In Cu­ra­cao, Colum­bus joined that is­land's IXP (AMS-IX Caribbean), and is now work­ing to sup­port the Ex­change's caching op­er­a­tions.

"There are two sides to caching," Prescod ex­plained. "One is the caching box, which pro­vides the con­tent to the users. But you al­so have to get that con­tent. So we are ac­tu­al­ly en­gaged in Cu­ra­cao to pro­vide that for­eign con­tent for those providers, cache it, and then serve it to the users.

"So not on­ly are we a mem­ber of the AMS-IX, but we al­so serve the glob­al In­ter­net to all of the caching box­es in Cu­ra­cao to­day. In the in­ter­est of sup­port­ing the de­vel­op­ment of the broad­band econ­o­my here in Cu­ra­cao, we thought it was im­por­tant we do so."

Prescod is al­so one of the board mem­bers of a third Caribbean In­ter­net Ex­change re­cent­ly in­cor­po­rat­ed as a non-prof­it com­pa­ny in Trinidad and To­ba­go. And he is hope­ful that the south­ern­most Caribbean is­land will be next in line to suc­cess­ful­ly es­tab­lish a ful­ly func­tion­al Ex­change.

"At this time, we've on­ly got­ten con­sen­sus around sev­en In­ter­net Ser­vice Providers that there should be an Ex­change," he said. "We've sort of de­cid­ed on a tech­ni­cal mod­el and we're look­ing over the two to six months to im­ple­ment that mod­el."

Prescod was speak­ing as part of a multi­na­tion­al, mul­ti-stake­hold­er pan­el dis­cus­sion in the morn­ing ses­sion of the CIGF. Along­side him were Nico Schep­er (Nether­lands), Craig Nesty (Do­mini­ca) and Bevil Wood­ing (Trinidad and To­ba­go). Their dis­cus­sion em­pha­sised the es­sen­tial link be­tween the per­for­mance of crit­i­cal In­ter­net in­fra­struc­ture and the stim­u­la­tion of the In­ter­net econ­o­my in the re­gion.

"Es­tab­lish­ing a lo­cal IXP can bring many ben­e­fits to Caribbean cit­i­zens, in­clud­ing faster do­mes­tic In­ter­net traf­fic ex­change and a more re­silient lo­cal net­work," said Wood­ing in a post-event in­ter­view.

He added, "IX­Ps are a crit­i­cal com­po­nent of the lo­cal In­ter­net econ­o­my, but they're not the on­ly com­po­nent."

As a whole, the Caribbean re­gion is served by on­ly six IX­Ps.Apart from Cu­ra­cao, they are in the British Vir­gin Is­lands, Haiti, Grena­da, St Maarten and Do­mini­ca.

Stake­hold­ers from the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca gath­ered in Cu­ra­cao to en­gage dis­cuss and de­vel­op poli­cies and struc­tures for re­gion­al In­ter­net gov­er­nance. The CIGF, which was or­gan­ised by the Caribbean Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union at the re­quest of the CARI­COM Sec­re­tari­at, em­pha­sis­es a mul­ti-stake­hold­er ap­proach to the de­vel­op­ment of re­gion­al In­ter­net Gov­er­nance pol­i­cy, draw­ing on the ex­per­tise and ex­pe­ri­ences of pol­i­cy mak­ers, reg­u­la­tors, ser­vice providers, con­tent providers, con­sumer groups, acad­e­mia, pro­fes­sion­als, end users and oth­er In­ter­net in­ter­est groups in the re­gion.

Ger­ard Best is New Me­dia Ed­i­tor at Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed. He isa Caribbean jour­nal­ist, blog­ger and so­cial me­dia spe­cial­ist based in Trinidad and To­ba­go. His ex­pe­ri­ence spans tra­di­tion­al and new me­dia plat­forms and in­cludes work on print, ra­dio and tele­vi­sion for ma­jor me­dia hous­es. His writ­ing and po­et­ry has gar­nered in­ter­na­tion­al awards and re­gion­al recog­ni­tion. He holds post­grad­u­ate qual­i­fi­ca­tions in De­vel­op­ment Jour­nal­ism and Me­dia Ethics and a pro­found in­ter­est in all things Caribbean. He blogs at bl­o­gos­phere.