Woman's work: Birthing Caribbean entrepreneurs

You really don’t know what to expect when you put a dozen-plus Caribbean entrepreneurs in one room for a week.

But one thing was clear when 15 entrepreneurs—all women—came together in Port of Spain in April. It was the start of something good.

The ladies gathered to share experiences and build strategies for future collaboration. Besides their Caribbean heritage and passion for productivity, these go-getters had something else in common. Each had been competitively selected to take part in the first-ever facilitators training for the Women's Innovation Network of the Caribbean (WINC) program. The initiative is a World Bank project to support woman entrepreneurs in the region. It is funded via the Canada Development Bank.

The one-week workshop focused on teaching participants how to run courses targeted at other goal-oriented women in their home territory. Up to 10 of the 15 would receive funding to run the course for one year. For Nerissa Golden, though, the big win wasn’t in the funding but the friendships.

“This has been an incredible opportunity to connect with other women who share this same passion for entrepreneurship and empowering others to launch and grow a business,” she said.

Goldenmedia, the company that she started 12 years ago in Montserrat, is a small business rooted primarily in the cultural and technology industries, and specialising in publicity and multimedia content creation for brands and entrepreneurs.

“The other ladies and I decided even before arriving in Port of Spain that the greater gift was in having this new connection and awareness that we weren't alone in our desire to serve our communities with business growth programmes. We’re already exploring ways that we can work together to help each other achieve our business goals long after the project funding runs out. Each woman is a professional in various disciplines and so the opportunity to learn from them has been quite a gift. We've all been strengthened by being able to connect and find common ground on which we want to build future collaborations.”

Breeding entreprise WINC is part of the Entrepreneurship Program for Innovation in the Caribbean (EPIC), which is being implemented by infoDev, a global multidonor program in the Trade and Competitiveness Global Practice of the World Bank Group, with support from Canada's Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development (DFATD).

The program is being implemented across the region by Enterprise Hub a T&T-based company specialising in providing support services to a wide range of start-ups and established entrepreneurs. Enterprise Hub founder and lead consultant Ashley Mitchell, himself an entrepreneur, said that "intermediary agencies," such as the World Bank's infoDev, can be a significant source of financial support for budding businesses.

Beyond simply acting as a bridge to start-up financing, Enterprise Hub works alongside the business owners to open their eyes to fresh opportunity, enhance their ability for innovation and increase their tolerance for risk-taking. Encouraging people to take initiative and challenge received wisdom—even within the constraints of a full-time job—is crucial to unlocking the region's entrepreneurial potential, Mitchell said.

"Our young people have been conditioned and sheperded over time to simply get on a track of academic pursuit. There's nothing wrong with that but it's not for everyone. Some of our Caribbean people are very willing to take entrepreneurial risks but that ability is not being harnessed in a constructive way by our formal education systems."

Entrepreneurship, says Mitchell, is a mindset. And you can act entrepreneurially even without ever leaving your job, he said.

Nor should local entrepreneurship depend on foreign agencies or even national governments, Golden underscored.

“Entrepreneurship is still one of the sexy topics for governments and international donor agencies. However, we have to see it not as a ‘hot topic’ but essential to how every nation is going to grow its economy."

More cohesion is needed in how programs are implemented across the Caribbean, as many have the similar goals but resources are not used efficiently, she said.

“I would like to see more entrepreneurs being given the capacity to unleash their ideas by having the financial support they need, the theoretical knowledge and the access to markets. Bottom line is entrepreneurship challenges won't be solved by governments, only entrepreneurs can do that,” she said.

A life's work Golden participated in the Grow Your Business boot camp, another WINC project, in 2013 and 2014, and before that had been working with entrepreneurs for more than 10 years, through Goldenmedia.

“My vision is to create opportunities for the Caribbean to grow and an important way to do this is through the media. Most of what will generate revenue and transform our nations are the ideas inside of us waiting to be unleashed. I like being a part of providing the platforms as well as guiding how these messages can connect with the people ready to hear it.”

She said she saw WINC as a way to continue with her life’s work.

“Much of the work I do is centered around job creation and empowerment, so this is an extension of that. I began hosting my own entrepreneurship conferences in 2006 simply because I realised other people had the same need as I did to learn about starting a business.”

The latest WINC initiative, coordinated by the Enterprise Hub, covered eight subject areas including Marketing, Technology, Networking and Financial Management, giving Golden and others rich resource from which to draw for future growth.

“I am looking forward to first implementing the new ideas I learned or were reinforced this week to help my company continue along a growth path, then it will be extended out to Montserrat and neighbouring islands,” she said.

Originally published: Trinidad and Tobago Guardian

Faster Internet coming to Belize

Sometimes the best solution to a technical problem is social engineering. After a journey of two years, that’s exactly how Belize has come to a major milestone in its technological development. The country’s Internet service providers (ISPs) have committed to set up Belize’s first-ever Internet exchange point (IXP), a piece of critical Internet infrastructure through which they can exchange local Internet traffic between their networks. The process was as simple—and as difficult—as getting nine Internet service providers (ISPs), all fierce competitors, to agree to work together for the greater good.

Belize Telemedia, Speednet, BroadBand Belize, and Network Solutions signed the historic agreement on April 16 at the University of Belize’s (UB) Belize City campus, clearing the way for the establishment of the region’s latest IXP, called Belize IX or BIX.

“As with all things important and meaningful, it was not an easy task to get to this point. However, the journey of the negotiating the pathway to this agreement for the Belize Internet exchange (BIX) was in indeed rewarding,” said Michael Kong, owner and CEO at NetKing Solutions, who spoke at the signing on behalf of the ISPs.

Other signatures to the memorandum of understanding (MOU) include Centaur Communications Corporation, Alliance IP Belize and NetKing Solutions.

“I speak on behalf of all providers when I say that determined team effort and collaboration for the greater good made this historic day a reality. We can all be happy and proud to know we are part of a milestone that will go down in ICT history in Belize,” Kong said.

The agreement marks a significant moment for Belize. It is the first time that the country's ISPs put aside their differences to work together to address a challenge that affects them all—bandwidth.

“The upcoming launch of BIX will put an end to a costly and inefficient situation whereby data and access to other critical local services has to be routed internationally just to get back to a local customer, who could be only a few feet away from the person who sent it. In other words, we were using expensive international Internet connections to exchange domestic traffic,” said Bevil Wooding, Internet strategist with international non-profit Packet Clearing House, speaking in an interview following the signing.

Packet Clearing House, a non-profit organisation, plays a key role in implementing IXPs around the world. In the Caribbean, Wooding and his team have worked closely with the Caribbean Telecommunications Union, regulators and local ISPs to set up IXPs across the region.

Faster Net Traditionally, local internet traffic would need to leave Belize to an ISP in the United States and then get rerouted back to Belize. Once BIX is set up, that local traffic will no longer have to leave the country. That means better speeds for local Internet users.

Establishing a local IXP brings benefits not only to local consumers but also to the ISPs’ bottom line, Wooding explained.

“A local IXP improves the quality and cost effectiveness of delivering local Internet-enabled services to citizens and businesses. That’s a major benefit for local ISPs. The IXP also enables new forms of local innovation and entrepreneurship, as Internet users benefit from greater opportunities for e-commerce and local content development, including online education."

Alan Slusher, President of the University of Belize, said the university “is looking forward to greatly expanding its capacity to deliver training across the length and breadth of the country and directly into the homes and workplaces of our work people. Thus greatly reducing the costs of education while expanding its availability. We are looking for a great leap forward as a result of this corporation.”

The soon-to-be established IXP will not only address the inefficiency of local Internet traffic exchange. It will also allow other important Internet infrastructure to be located in Belize, such as domain name root services and content delivery caches from major content networks like Google, Netflix and Yahoo.

Roosevelt Blades, chair of the ISP working group, is already looking ahead. He announced at the signing there are plans to have a similar facility built in Belmopan, once the Belize City IX is up and running.

Technical discussions about how to set up the IXP started two years ago, with a working group that included ISPs, the Belize Public Utilities Commission, government ministries, Packet Clearing House with support from other regional stakeholders, including the Caribbean Telecommunications Union, and the Caribbean Network Operators Group (CaribNOG).

Speaking at an October 2013 CaribNOG event at which the plans to establish BIX were announced, Kingsley Smith, then Director of Telecommunications at the Belize Public Utilities Commission said, “This development is expected to provide significant benefits to local ISPs and the Internet users in Belize.”

With the signing finally becoming a reality, Belizean Internet users are one step closer to a faster, stronger and more secure Internet.

(Other sources: The Reporter, 7News)  

Originally published: Trinidad and Tobago Guardian

Digicel Joins St Lucia Internet Exchange

Saint Lucia’s Internet users can look forward to better connectivity and faster speeds between local Internet service providers (ISPs). Digicel signed a memorandum of understanding on April 2, agreeing to become the newest member of the Saint Lucia Internet exchange (SLiX). Digicel joins its competitors FLOW and LIME, founding members of SLiX, in an initiative designed to improve the reliability of the Internet in St Lucia.

The three ISPs met last March at the Ministry of Public Service, Information and Broadcasting to discuss the possibility of Digicel joining the local Internet exchange. That meeting ended with a unanimous vote, clearing the way for Saint Lucia to become the first Caribbean territory where Digicel is participating in a local IXP.

With the three telecommunications companies peering at SLiX, their networks will interconnect directly, rather than through a third party in a foreign territory.

That translates to faster connectivity for customers, and lower operating costs to the Internet service providers, explained Christopher Roberts, Project Coordinator for the Caribbean Regional Communications Infrastructure Programme (CARCIP) in Saint Lucia.

“Without a local IXP, for example, e-mail sent from a customer on one St Lucian ISP to a customer of another St Lucian ISP would have to travel all the way to an IXP in the USA before returning to Saint Lucia. The involvement of that facility in the USA is expensive, could result in delays, and could result in someone or some foreign government inspecting your data,” Roberts said.

“With the implementation of the SLiX, that data now travels from a local sender to a local recipient without ever having to leave Saint Lucia. The benefits are faster delivery times and reduced cost, because that unnecessarily longer trip has now been eliminated.”

SLiX was launched in February 2014, with support from Packet Clearing House, the world’s leading implementation of Internet exchange points or IXPs. Bevil Wooding, Internet Strategist with PCH, said, “Given the consolidation currently being witnessed in the Caribbean telecom sector, Digicel’s participation in SLiX is an important milestone for the region. It proves that competitors in the space can collaborate on areas of mutual benefit for their business and their customers. SLiX is already one of the fastest growing IXPs in the region, and Digicel’s inclusion will only help make it even better for Local Internet users.”

The growth of the SLiX is part of the wider ongoing effort by the Saint Lucia government to support the Internet-based economic growth, under the umbrella of CARCIP. Funded by the International Development Association of the World Bank and coordinated by the Caribbean Telecommunications Union, CARCIP seeks to help governments and private sector to harmonise the development of critical telecommunications infrastructure across three participating Eastern Caribbean countries—Saint Lucia, Grenada, and St Vincent and the Grenadines.

The SLiX implementation was also supported by the engineers from the Caribbean Network Operators Group (CaribNOG), which will host its next regional meeting in St Lucia at the end of April, to continue its work in training network engineers to support IXPs and other critical internet infrastructure.

“It is good to see ISPs in the region supporting local traffic exchange through IXPs,” said Stephen Lee, a founding member of CaribNOG. “CaribNOG has been working with PCH to support IXP proliferation across the region and those efforts are now bearing fruit.”

The Saint Lucia exchange is one of nine IXPs in the Caribbean.

Other active IXPS are located in Barbados, Curacao, Grenada, Haiti, Jamaica, St Maarten, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago.

Belize and St Kitts and Nevis are expected to be the next countries to establish IXPs soon.

The upcoming Caribbean Peering and Interconnection Forum will bring all the region’s IXPs together to share experience and forge new relationships with international content providers.

That meeting takes place in Barbados in May.