Opinion: Strengthening Caribbean Internet Capacity to Support Local Online Services
By Bevil Wooding Director of Caribbean Affairs, ARIN
(CircleID) The Caribbean needs more robust infrastructure to support the delivery of local online services during the COVID-19 pandemic and for crises to come.
Public health and safety mandates, from social distancing and quarantines to stay-at-home orders and curfews, have confined an estimated one billion persons to their homes globally. The sudden restrictions on social movement have created a reliance on the Internet and technology-enabled services. This should come as no surprise. Society has been virtually forced to go online to shop, work, access education, keep in touch with family and friends, and to be entertained. The Internet is no longer optional for certain types of transactions and social interactions; it’s the only option!
The surge in Internet usage is testing the capacity and resilience of local as well as regional networks. At the same time, online users are also now more sensitive to the quality of their Internet service and the reliability of their Internet Service Providers (ISPs).
The ability to move to eLearning and eEducation is grounded in the significant outlays https://t.co/YVpScm4Bh3 governments across the Region have made in ICT infrastructure.
— Caribbean Community (CARICOM) (@CARICOMorg) April 19, 2020
Kimano Barrow, a commissioner at the Belize Public Utilities Commission and regional IT expert, describes the situation in Belize:
“The COVID-19 crisis has definitely impacted Internet traffic patterns and changed data consumption behaviours, but it has not broken the net in Belize. Our investment over the past few years to boost Belize’s network capacity and encourage domestic Internet traffic exchange has borne fruit. Now, we just have to get more local services online.”
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