Basseterre, St. Kitts, August 16, 2017 (SKNIS): Director of the St. Kitts and Nevis National Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (NTRC), Mr. Ervin Williams, and Director on the Board of Directors of the Eastern Caribbean Telecommunications Authority (ECTEL), Mr. Quincy Prentice, announced on an episode of Working for You, held on August 16, 2017, that the Internet Exchange Point (IXP) is to be in place by the end of the first quarter of 2018.
“St. Kitts and Nevis was actually the first within the Caribbean region to attack the situation of establishing an IXP,” stated Mr. Williams as he explained that the IXP, simply put, is a switch that keeps local internet traffic locally based.
Mr. Prentice expressed that the benefits of having an IXP installed in the Federation will help to keep the transfer of information secure, increase the speed of traffic over the internet, reduce the cost to the service providers and improve the traveling of information. He mentioned that the implementation of the IXP will also bring local consumers and local producers closer together. “By improving the performance, you are encouraging persons to consume local content and create local content as well,” he added.
At a workshop held on May 04, 2017, there was a discussion for the installation of the IXP infrastructure in St. Kitts and Nevis as well as a National Information and Communication Technology Centre (ITC) which is now open. The head of the IXP initiative is Mr. Pierre Bowrin, Information and Communications Technology Policy Advisor in the Office of Information and Communications Technology who oversees the committee that is currently building the framework with the necessary policies and procedures that will govern the IXP.
