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Tuesday, July 8, 2025

Tech­nol­o­gy Mat­ters

Growing the local net

In­creas­ing mo­men­tum for Caribbean In­ter­net ex­change points

by

20140501

In the Caribbean, much at­ten­tion has been giv­en to mak­ing In­ter­net ac­cess more ubiq­ui­tous and more af­ford­able to or­di­nary users. Re­cent­ly, the spot­light has al­so been on the un­der­ly­ing crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture to sup­port In­ter­net us­age in the re­gion. Gov­ern­ments and In­ter­net ser­vice providers been re­spond­ing pos­i­tive­ly to en­sure that a prop­er foun­da­tion is in place to safe­guard the sta­bil­i­ty and re­silience of the re­gion's nascent In­ter­net econ­o­my.

Lo­cal prob­lem, glob­al so­lu­tion

In many coun­tries, poor con­nec­tiv­i­ty be­tween In­ter­net Ser­vice Providers (ISPs) of­ten re­sults in the lo­cal In­ter­net traf­fic be­ing rout­ed over ex­pen­sive long-haul links, sim­ply to re­turn des­ti­na­tions with­in the coun­try of ori­gin. There Caribbean is no ex­cep­tion to this ex­pen­sive in­ef­fi­cien­cy. For most coun­tries in the re­gion, In­ter­net traf­fic be­tween lo­cal ISPs is need­less­ly be­ing rout­ed as far away as the US and Eu­rope be­fore get­ting to in­tend­ed lo­cal users. It is equiv­a­lent to a com­muter in San Fer­nan­do, Trinidad be­ing made to pass through Mi­a­mi in the US, to get to his in­tend­ed des­ti­na­tion in Port-of-Span.

Around 2009 the Caribbean Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union (CTU) be­gan alert­ing Caribbean Gov­ern­ments and ISPs to this cost­ly in­ef­fi­cien­cy, not just as it re­lates to in­ter­net traf­fic man­age­ment, but to the re­gion's over­all de­vel­op­ment agen­da.

"In­vest­ments in tech­nol­o­gy ini­tia­tives, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the ser­vices, tourism and ed­u­ca­tion sec­tors, are be­ing ham­strung by high costs, low band­width and un­re­li­able In­ter­net ser­vices. Our mem­ber coun­tries com­plained that they were just not see­ing the re­turns they ex­pect­ed from their In­ter­net-de­pen­dent in­for­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy pro­grams," said Bernadette Lewis, sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the CTU.

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