Representing the Caribbean: ICANN Roadshow comes to Trinidad and Tobago

PORT OF SPAIN. Local and regional technology experts will gather in Port of Spain, Trinidad later this month to share their knowledge with participants in a roadshow organised by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

The roadshow will be the first such ICANN event in the Caribbean and it is expected to attract a wide cross-section of participants ranging from academia and technical communities, to corporations, government representatives, civil society and end users.

“We are extremely proud to break new ground in bringing the LAC-i-Roadshow to Trinidad and Tobago,” said Albert Daniels, Caribbean-area manager for ICANN’s Global Stakeholder Engagement team.

The event, which takes place at the Hilton Hotel, St Ann’s, will start at 8.30 am on April 25.

The LAC-i-Roadshow is designed to raise awareness across the region on key topics related to the transition to IPv6, the impact of the new generic top level domain (gTLD) program, and the security and stability of critical Internet infrastructure.

Besides Daniels, other ICANN representatives expected to present are Tracey Hackshaw, Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) vice chair, and Dev Anand Teelucksingh, At Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) member.

Speakers are also drawn from regional registries and local organisations which work together to maintain the global interoperability of the Internet. Presentations will be made by representatives of The Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU), the Regional Internet Registry for the Latin American and Caribbean regions (LACNIC), the Caribbean Network Operators Group (CaribNOG), and the Trinidad and Tobago Network Information Centre (TTNIC).

“There will be four editions of the LAC-i-Roadshow per year in the Caribbean, the Andean region, Central America and South America,” said Daniels.

Suriname hosts CTU regional technology development meetings

Caribbean leaders will meet in Suriname this week to push forward the region’s technology development agenda. The South American country will host an executive meeting of the Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU) on April 8th and 9th at the Hotel Krasnapolsky, Paramaribo.

The CTU’s executive council is made up of permanent secretaries from ministries with responsibility for telecommunications in the CTU member states. The council has oversight responsibility for the work of the CTU secretariat.

At the meeting, Bernadette Lewis, secretary general of the CTU, will present to the executive council chairman her report on the performance of the organisation and the progress of its recent and ongoing projects.

Cleveland Thomas, International Telecommunication Union (ITU) area representative for the Caribbean, and Albert Daniels, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) global stakeholder engagement manager for the Caribbean, are also expected to make presentations at the high-level meeting.

The CTU was established by the heads of government of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) in 1989 in Nassau, The Bahamas. The latest executive council comes on the heels of the 25th intersessional meeting of the conference of CARICOM heads of government, a top-level meeting which underscored the significant role of regional leadership in designing and implementing the Caribbean’s technology development agenda.

One highlight of the executive council meeting will be a video presentation by leadership development expert, Dr. Farid Youssef of the Faculty of Medical Sciences, The University of the West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago. Dr Youssef will identify drivers for effective leadership in the Caribbean context.

Managing Caribbean Spectrum

The two-day event is sandwiched in a weeklong series of regional technology development meetings hosted by the government of Suriname, through its Ministry of Transport, Communications and Tourism, under the leadership of Minister Falisie Josef Pinas.

On April 7, Pinas delivered welcome remarks at the inaugural meeting of the Spectrum Management Steering Committee (SMSC), a multi-country team of senior government policy makers and industry regulators.

The inaugural SMSC meeting comes as the Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU) is rolling out its Harmonised Caribbean Spectrum Planning and Management project across its fourteen member countries. The project, which was formally launched in Montego Bay, Jamaica in December 2013, is being undertaken with technical support from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and Compete Caribbean. It aims to harmonise practices and procedures for spectrum management across the countries.

The Spectrum Management Task Force (SMTF), a multi-country, multi-stakeholder technical committee of government, regulatory, private sector, academic and civil society personnel, held its first workshop in February. Conducted in collaboration with the ITU and the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency, the inaugural SMTF workshop focused on emergency telecommunications.

On April 7, the SMSC started building on the work of the SMTF. The SMSC is aiming to develop a regional frequency allocation table, which is intended to facilitate the adoption of common frequencies for disaster management and emergency telecommunications.

On the last two conference days, April 10th and 11th, the CTU will conduct a pair of workshops designed to highlight adaptive technologies available to deaf and blind people. Presentations will focus on ways in which people with visual and auditory impairments can use the Internet to make the most of opportunities for education, training and employment. Some sessions will highlight specific devices that can help people overcome the loss of sight and hearing, using popular platforms such as Apple’s iOs and Google’s Android.

U.S. to relinquish key internet stewardship function

The U.S. government has announced its intention to divest itself of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions. On March 14, the U.S. Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) declared its intent to transitionthe stewardship of key Internet domain name functions to the global, multistakeholder community.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) was asked by the U.S. government to lead a process for a global multistakeholder community dialogue about what this transition will entail and how it will proceed. ICANN has since launched a process to transition the role of the United States Government relating to the Internet's unique identifiers system, a release on the organisation's website said.

The Internet's unique identifier functions are not apparent to most Internet users, but they play a critical role in maintaining a single, global, unified and interoperable Internet. IANA functions involve the coordination of those unique Internet identifiers. These include allocating Internet Numbers in cooperation with the Regional Internet Registries, administration of the DNS root zone, and coordination of root zone management. The IANA functions are administered by ICANN.

"We are inviting governments, the private sector, civil society, and other Internet organisations from the whole world to join us in developing this transition process," said Fadi Chehadé, ICANN's President and CEO. "All stakeholders deserve a voice in the management and governance of this global resource as equal partners."

The change is significant to the Caribbean community of Internet users.

"It is particularly important that users from the Caribbean take an interest in these developments, understand the mechanisms by which their voices can be heard in the global debate and then step forward as Caribbean nations and as a Caribbean region to make an input to the processes of dialogue and policy development," said Albert H. Daniels, ICANN's Global Stakeholder Engagement Manager for the Caribbean, in a Q&A on regional technology blog ICT Pulse.

ICANN's role as administrator of the Internet's unique identifier system, remains unchanged, the release said.

"Even though ICANN will continue to perform these vital technical functions, the U.S. has long envisioned the day when stewardship over them would be transitioned to the global community," said Dr. Stephen D. Crocker,ICANN's Board Chair. "In other words, we have all long known the destination. Now it is up to our global stakeholder community to determine the best route to get us there."

Secretary General of the International Telecommunications Union, Dr Hamadoun I. Touré issued a statement welcoming the announcement: "I would like to reiterate what I have said many times: the Internet is a global public good and therefore all nations and peoples should have an equal say in its running and development. I commend the US government's announcement about changing oversight arrangements of the management of critical internet resources and I believe this development will lead to improved and productive cooperation between the telecommunications and internet communities."

While the announcement does not affect Internet users and their use of the Internet, all Internet users have a stake in how the Internet is run, and it is therefore important to get involved, an ICANN statement said.

The first community-wide dialogue about the development of the transitional process will begin March 23-27 during ICANN's 49th Public Meeting, in Singapore. ICANN described the process as "consensus-driven, participatory, open, and transparent".

All global stakeholders are welcome to participate in person or remotely. More information on how to participate in the process is available from ICANN here.