Amon Sa­ba Saakana

Mak­ing a ma­jor in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy (IT) in­vest­ment is a lot like un­der­tak­ing ma­jor surgery. In both cas­es, you want to be cer­tain the pro­ce­dure is nec­es­sary and you want to be even more cer­tain of a suc­cess­ful out­come. In busi­ness, un­cer­tain­ty the last thing you want when it comes to mak­ing a crit­i­cal IT de­ci­sion. You need to be cer­tain that an IT de­ci­sion for your busi­ness is based up­on ap­pro­pri­ate facts, es­tab­lished busi­ness ob­jec­tives and clear un­der­stand­ing of rel­e­vant op­tions. And you need to know that your de­ci­sion will lead to tan­gi­ble, pos­i­tive re­sults. In Sec­ond Opin­ion, I in­vite you to send in your ques­tions for ob­jec­tive analy­sis and rec­om­men­da­tions.

Does T&T re­al­ly need an In­ter­net ex­change point?

Dear TM-SO,

I un­der­stand that plans are afoot to es­tab­lish an In­ter­net ex­change point (IXP) in T&T. What ex­act­ly is an IXP, and how can it re­al­ly ben­e­fit de­vel­op­ment of the lo­cal In­ter­net?

Bri­an C (Con­sul­tant)

Bri­an,

An IXP is a phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture through which In­ter­net ser­vice providers (ISPs) agree to ex­change lo­cal In­ter­net traf­fic be­tween their net­works. It is a fa­cil­i­ty that al­lows do­mes­tic-bound In­ter­net traf­fic to stay lo­cal and not have to be sent via long, ex­pen­sive over­seas routes. Send­ing do­mes­tic-bound traf­fic through a lo­cal IXP has huge cost and per­for­mance im­pli­ca­tions for the ISP and for its con­sumers.

There are more than 300 IX­Ps glob­al­ly, but on­ly five in the Caribbean: Cu­ra­cao, St Maarten, Haiti, Grena­da and BVI.

Re­gion­al gov­ern­ments and In­ter­net ser­vice providers are recog­nis­ing that do­mes­tic In­ter­net traf­fic ex­change is a key fac­tor in de­vel­op­ing the do­mes­tic In­ter­net econ­o­my nec­es­sary and spark­ing new lev­els of In­ter­net-based in­no­va­tion, lo­cal con­tent cre­ation and in­dus­try growth.

The es­tab­lish­ment of a lo­cal IXP en­ables high-band­width, low la­ten­cy ap­pli­ca­tions, like mul­ti­me­dia, gam­ing, and file-host­ing. It ben­e­fits high­ly in­ter­ac­tive ap­pli­ca­tions, like trans­ac­tion-based ser­vices, video con­fer­enc­ing and stream­ing, on­line stock trad­ing and gov­ern­ment ser­vices. It al­so fa­cil­i­tates band­width-in­ten­sive ac­tiv­i­ties, like lo­cal cloud com­put­ing. And from a se­cu­ri­ty and da­ta pri­va­cy stand­point, send­ing sen­si­tive da­ta across na­tion­al bor­ders presents a pri­va­cy risk to gov­ern­ments and cor­po­ra­tions. By keep­ing lo­cal traf­fic lo­cal, sen­si­tive da­ta is not sub­ject to in­spec­tion by oth­er gov­ern­ments. Es­tab­lish­ing IMPs through­out the Caribbean is not just a nice idea, it is a re­gion­al im­per­a­tive.

The in­for­ma­tion pre­sent­ed is for gen­er­al guid­ance and in no event shall the colum­nist or the pub­lish­er be li­able for any in­ci­den­tal, in­di­rect, con­se­quen­tial or spe­cial dam­ages of any kind, or any dam­ages what­so­ev­er, in­clud­ing, with­out lim­i­ta­tion, those re­sult­ing from loss of prof­it, loss of con­tracts, good­will, da­ta, in­for­ma­tion, in­come, ex­pect­ed sav­ings or busi­ness re­la­tion­ships, whether or not ad­vised of the pos­si­bil­i­ty of such dam­age, aris­ing out of or in con­nec­tion with the use of this col­umn.