Internet experts meet to improve Caribbean networks

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados—The first-ever Caribbean Peering and Internet Connection Forum (CarPIF) successfully concluded with commitments from Internet companies Akamai Technologies and Google to pay closer attention to the needs of Caribbean Internet service providers and consumers. More than forty regional and international technology experts met in Barbados on May 27 to 28 to discuss strategies for improving the economics and technical efficiency of Internet content delivery in the Caribbean.

The meeting, organised by the Caribbean Network Operators Group (CaribNOG), explored the state of Caribbean Internet infrastructure, the impact of local Internet exchange point (IXP) deployment in the region, and practical steps for improving the quality and cost-effectiveness of Internet service across the region.

The gathering was supported by two non-profit Internet organisations, Packet Clearing House (PCH) and the Internet Society (ISOC), along with the Caribbean Telecommunications Union.

It attracted Internet service providers, including Cable & Wireless and Columbus Networks, as well as telecommunications regulators and IXP operators from across the Caribbean. International participants included the American Registry for Internet Numbers (Arin) and the Internet Registry for Latin America and the Caribbean (LACNIC), search-engine giant Google, and Akamai, the world’s largest content delivery network provider.

“The success of the region’s first peering forum is testament to the increasing maturity of the Caribbean Internet community, and the increasing regard for that community by international players in the Internet space,” said Bevil Wooding, Internet Strategist with PCH and a main organiser of the event.

He said that while the region recently made "positive strides" in establishing critical Internet infrastructure, there was still "considerable room for improving the reliability and efficient delivery of content to Caribbean consumers."

Wooding, one of the co-founders of CaribNOG, is responsible for establishing the peering forum, together with Shernon Osepa, Regional Outreach Manager for Isoc, an organisation that encourages and supports peering forums in other parts of the world.

"ISOC was pleased to be able to work together with the CaribNOG community and Packet Clearing House to stage this first peering forum in the Caribbean,” Osepa said.

Arturo Servin, who works on content delivery and peering for Latin America, the Caribbean and the Iberian Peninsula at Google, shared on the mega-corporation’s experience in bringing its content closer to Caribbean customers. Google Inc. is the company behind popular Internet services such as YouTube and Gmail.

“Google wants to bring its content as close as possible to Caribbean audiences,” Servin said. “We are currently exploring options that will allow us to better service Internet service providers and IXPs in small markets like those in the region."

Google committed at the meeting to support Internet exchange points in the Caribbean, and used the opportunity to meet face to face with IX operators and regulators from across the region.

“This was a great opportunity to meet our customers in the Caribbean and establish new connections,” said Martin Hannigan, ‎Director, Networks and Data Center Architecture at Akamai Technologies.  “These types of gatherings are commonplace in other regions, so it’s great to see the Caribbean establishing CarPIF and putting things in place to make it possible for consumers and businesses to have a better Internet experience. That improved customer experience is the real point of peering and it's what matters most."

Organisers announced plans for the second CarPIF event to be staged in Curacao in June 2016.

Originally published: Trinidad and Tobago Guardian

Havana to host LACNIC 25

LIMA, Peru—Cuba will host a significant gathering of the regional Internet community next year.

The Havana Convention Centre will host the twenty-fifth meeting of the Internet Addresses Registry for Latin America and the Caribbean (LACNIC) from May 2 to 6, 2016.

"Havana will be the capital of the Latin American and the Caribbean Internet Community in May 2016," said Jorge Villa, manager of the national university network at the Cuban Ministry of Higher Education, told the Guardian.

The Cuban State Telecommunications Company ETECSA is the official host of the event.

Cuba hosted the fifth LACNIC meeting in 2003.

"This will be the second time that LACNIC flies to Havana for its meetings. It will be a great opportunity for the Caribbean community to participate in a better way in this community," Villa told the Guardian.

LACNIC executive director Oscar Robles made the official announcement at the end of LACNIC 23, held in Lima, Peru from May 18 to 22. The news was greeted with loud applause by hundreds of delegates, who had gathered for the weeklong conference to discuss questions of Internet governance and other issues affecting the evolution of the regional Internet.

For Cuba, it comes as the latest in a series of significant developments in its nascent telecommunications sector. Until 2012, most Internet users on the Caribbean's largest island had only had limited bandwidth via satellite connection. The Geneva-based International Telecommunications Union (ITU) ranks Cuba lowest in the Americas in telecommunications development. It says about 25 per cent of Cubans have access to the Internet.

In early 2013, the Cuban government opened several cybercafes, which have become the primary point of access to the Internet for local users. The Cuban public mostly has State-controlled Internet access in schools and workplaces.

Cuban officials have been promising better Internet service for years but have cited the U.S. economic embargo and political aggression as reasons for its stunted development.

The U.S. rapprochement toward Cuba in late 2014 came with added pressure for the island to hasten the modernisation of its telecommunications infrastructure. The U.S. made telecommunications equipment, technology and services among the first exemptions to the embargo after Washington and Havana announced last December that they would restore diplomatic relations.

In February, Cuba's First Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel pledged online access for all, and acknowledged that the country cannot develop without better connectivity to the Internet.

Following the Vice President's speech, there have been several positive developments in the form of digital literacy training centres, wireless hotspots and a project to increase access to fixed and mobile telecommunications services, Villa told the Guardian in an exclusive interview.

In March, New Jersey-based IDT Corp. became the first U.S. company to strike a long-distance deal with Cuba since the Obama administration's rapprochement. Previously, U.S. carriers were unable to make direct calls to Cuba and had to use a non-U.S. carrier for the final connection.

Later that month, a U.S. delegation travelled to Havana to explore business opportunities for U.S. telecommunications companies.

In May, French companies including telecommunications corporation Orange accompanied President Francois Hollande on the first visit by a European leader since Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez visited in 1986.

Caribbean "significant" to global Internet governance—ICANN

LIMA, Peru—A top executive of the non-profit that oversees all the Internet addresses has described the Caribbean as “significant” to the governance of the global Internet.

Rodrigo de la Parra, vice president for Latin America and the Caribbean at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), said the sub-region’s geopolitics give it “strategic” importance and the potential to punch above its weight on the global stage.

“If you look at the Caribbean in terms of population, it’s not that representative, but if you look in terms of the nations, it’s huge. It’s perhaps even larger in number than the rest of the Latin American region,” de la Parra told the Guardian.

The demographic diversity of the small-island states’ relatively small populations makes them “unique” and more representative than their larger, more homogeneous Central and South American neighbours, he said.

De la Parra was speaking in an interview during an annual gathering of the Internet community organised by the Internet Address Registry for Latin America and the Caribbean (LACNIC) in Lima, Peru.

The weeklong event was “an opportunity for stakeholders from the Caribbean served by LACNIC to update themselves with regard to current issues” affecting the region, said ICANN Stakeholder Engagement Manager for the Caribbean, Albert Daniels. Hundreds of delegates gathered from May 18 to 22 for talks on Internet governance and other issues affecting the evolution of the regional Internet.

Not only is the Caribbean quite significant, de la Parra said, but its significance is growing. The region’s resident expertise and capacity have been increasing substantially, in large part through the efforts of active agencies on the ground, such as the Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU).

“In terms of Internet governance, the Caribbean is an example to the world,” de la Parra said, adding that the work of the CTU has set the region apart.

“The Caribbean Telecommunications Union has been the leader in the world in the discussion of Internet governance. Even at the global level, there have been fewer Internet Governance Forums than in the Caribbean, and the CTU is leading these efforts.”

In addition to its Caribbean Internet Governance Forum, the CTU pioneered the Caribbean ICT Roadshow, which has become a global model for building basic digital awareness and enhancing advanced technical capacity in rural or remote areas.

To ensure the continued expansion and security of the Internet in the region, de la Parra said, bodies like ICANN must continue to work alongside the CTU, the Caribbean Network Operators Group (CaribNOG), the Internet Society (ISOC) and other key regional Internet organisations, such as the two regional Internet registries with responsibility for the Caribbean—LACNIC and the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN).

The two Caribbean RIRs collaborate on a range of initiatives to improve the regional Internet. In July, they are to host a meeting of Caribbean ministers with responsibility for Internet and telecommunications in Miami, as part of an annual industry conference held by the Caribbean Association of National Telecommunication Organisations (CANTO), a regional association of service providers.

The main goal of the meeting is to encourage high-level decision-makers to deploy the latest version of Internet Protocol, called IPv6. Caribbean Internet service providers have been relatively slow to adopt the new technology. Studies on Internet traffic show a global average IPv6 adoption rate of around five per cent, while the region lags at less than one per cent.

The current Internet Protocol, called IPv4, does not have the amount of address space necessary to deal with the rapidly increasing number of connected devices that send and receive information online. ARIN’s stock of available IPv4 addresses is expected to run out soon.

“We’re sponsoring a ministerial breakfast to do outreach on IPv6 targeted at the top-level—the ministers, the CEOs—about why it’s important to transition to IPv6,” said Leslie Nobile, Senior Director of Global Registry Knowledge at ARIN, told the Guardian.

The two RIRs work together in the region on an informal basis, driven by a recognition of the benefit of their collaboration to the communities that they serve, Oscar Robles, LACNIC Executive Director, told the Guardian.

“We met in some of the regional forums, and we realised that we were doing similar things, so we said, ‘Let’s coordinate.’ We said, ‘Let’s work together, rather than compete,’” Robles said.

Originally published: Trinidad and Tobago Guardian