This is a much-desired end by tech-savvy persons within the Federation, as it potentially holds numerous benefits for Internet users. A typical IXP provides a physical infrastructure through which Internet service providers (ISPs) exchange traffic between their networks. In actual use, a local IXP would greatly improve routing efficiency, while at the same time reducing the average delivery costs for Internet service.

In short, establishing an exchange would add up to faster local download and upload speeds, as well as lower per-bit costs for Internet operators. What’s to dislike about that?

Apparently, though, according to a news report generated about the symposium, “the dominant telecommunications service provider seems to be dragging its feet and frustrating the process.”

It was also noted that other key stakeholders don’t appear to be motivated enough to get fully behind the push for a domestic IXP. Some event attendees decried the fact that it has been over a year since the issue was raised, and that very little has happened since then to show for it.

That is a real shame, and my hope is that enough pressure can be brought to bear in order to move the process forward. For the Federation to develop as a technology hub in the region, such developments need to happen. It is all part of selling the country’s business environment as one that is conducive to foreign investment.

The initiative would go hand-in-hand with a recent push to simplify and improve the process by which new businesses can be established, and to ameliorate the general business climate overall.

It would be a great selling point for any job generating business entity to know that the country supported its own IXP, and was therefore guaranteed to produce a first-rate Internet, and related, services.

An IXP consists of one or more network switches, to which local, and perhaps regional ISPs can connect to. The port speeds range from 10 Mbit/s in smaller developing countries to much larger ports in major online traffic centers.

The world’s biggest IXP resides in Frankfurt, Germany, and has an average throughput of 613 Gbit/s, as measured on August 15. Established in 1995, the massive exchange point has 540 connecting members. Amsterdam, Netherlands, sports the second-largest IXP, then comes London, followed by an intercontinental exchange that encompasses the U.S., Europe, and Asia-Pacific region.

Obviously, an IXP established in St. Kitts-Nevis would not be on the same scale, but it would be a huge step in the right direction to luring more businesses to set up shop here, and in creating a national reputation as a tech-savvy location.

Attracting businesses aside, a local exchange point would mean a chance to rapidly develop tech-related applications for education, health facilities, government functions, and many other peripheral sectors. It would be an all-around boon to the country’s telecommunications infrastructure, and would spawn many offshoots, such as the capacity to establish more advanced, faster cell phone networks.

In this age of rapidly accelerating security concerns, hosting an IXP would do much to reduce data exposure to persons located in other nations. For example, right now much of the region’s Internet traffic is directed through centers in North America. How much of a risk this entails, I don’t know, but it would certainly be a better situation to keep all such data in-house.

According to the aforesaid news report on the symposium, Wesley Wharton, Director of Technology for the Federation was nominated to organize the process of getting the ball rolling on a domestic IXP. The first stated step was to formalize the governance structure for an exchange point, and to have it ratified.

Going by the numbers released by the European Internet Exchange Association, there are over 280 IXPs around the globe. Twenty-one are categorized as being part of Latin America, within which two – the Open Caribbean Internet exchange in Philipsburg, St. Maarten, and the Caribbean Internet Exchange in Curacao – are in the Caribbean region.

An informative news bulletin by the CTU, released in May of this year, makes a persuasive case for proliferating domestic IXPs on as many islands as possible. The reasoning given was that even a regional exchange can be wasteful, in that traffic has to be routed to another location as opposed to staying within the communication networks of a given country.

This sounds like a laudable goal to me. There are no downsides that I’m aware of to establishing a domestic IXP, and hopefully the foot-draggers can be turned into sprinters, as it relates to laying the groundwork for such an eventuality.