The East­ern Caribbean is­land of Grena­da is em­bark­ing on a dri­ve to in­crease the amount of lo­cal con­tent avail­able to Grena­di­an In­ter­net users. Speak­ing at the launch of the re­lo­cat­ed Grena­da In­ter­net ex­change point, Hon Naz­im Burke, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and En­er­gy, stat­ed that the Gov­ern­ment of Grena­da is in full sup­port of ini­tia­tives to cre­ate In­ter­net-based con­tent that specif­i­cal­ly tar­gets the needs of Grena­da and its cit­i­zens.

An In­ter­net ex­change point (IXP) is a fa­cil­i­ty that al­lows ISPs to keep do­mes­tic In­ter­net traf­fic in a coun­try in­stead of rout­ing it through the US or Eu­rope. Ac­cord­ing to Ald­wyn Fer­gu­son, head of the Grena­da Na­tion­al Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Reg­u­la­to­ry Com­mis­sion (NTRC), "the Grena­da In­ter­net Ex­change Point and the new lo­cal DNS Root serv­er copy are im­por­tant steps in our ef­forts to im­prove the qual­i­ty, ef­fi­cien­cy and re­silience of In­ter­net ser­vices in Grena­da."

Fer­gu­son com­mend­ed lo­cal ser­vice providers Ca­ble & Wire­less Grena­da (trad­ing as LIME) and Colum­bus Com­mu­ni­ca­tions (Flow) for work­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly to im­ple­ment the new fa­cil­i­ties. He al­so sin­gled out Bernadette Lewis of the Caribbean Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union (CTU) and Bevil Wood­ing of the US-based non-prof­it Pack­et Clear­ing House for pro­vid­ing the tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance and train­ing sup­port.

The Grena­da NTRC played the role of fa­cil­i­ta­tor in guid­ing the project from con­cept to im­ple­men­ta­tion. Burke urged the Grena­da NTRC Com­mis­sion­ers and staff to con­tin­ue the process by work­ing on lo­cal con­tent ini­tia­tives. De­scrib­ing the es­tab­lish­ment of the lo­cal In­ter­net ex­change point as an im­por­tant first step, Burk said.

He said the Grena­di­an Gov­ern­ment has been hear­ing the laments of in­no­va­tors and mo­bile ap­pli­ca­tion de­vel­op­ers who have been clam­our­ing for high­er band­width for their lo­cal ap­pli­ca­tions ser­vices.

"As more cit­i­zens go on­line, as Gov­ern­ments move to e-gov­ern­ment, schools to dis­tance learn­ing, tra­di­tion­al me­dia go to e-pub­li­ca­tions and broad­cast­ing and ICT-based in­dus­tries are spawned, lo­cal con­tent for do­mes­tic con­sump­tion will grow and the val­ue of an In­ter­net ex­change point as crit­i­cal In­ter­net in­fra­struc­ture will be bet­ter un­der­stood across the re­gion."