BY GERARD BEST

WILLEMSTAD, Curacao—The third Caribbean Peering and Interconnection Forum will be on June 7, 2017 and the Internet community is already looking forward to it.

Referred to as CarPIF, the annual Forum is two days of meetings and deal-making specifically to promote regional Internet development. The first CarPIF meeting was held in May 2015, Barbados, the second in June 2016 in Curaçao.

Major global players look forward to these Peering Forums, or PIFs, because they provide a perfect setting for brokering new business deals in the various regional markets around the world. And the significance of the opportunity is hardly lost on Caribbean internet stakeholders.

This year, more than 100 key decision makers from across the region—including officials from internet organisations, telecommunications regulators and governments—gathered in Willemstad for the opportunity to meet with exchange point operators, Internet service providers and well-known international content providers, including Facebook, Google and Akamai.

“CarPIF 3 builds upon the success of the past two regional fora. The relationships between content providers, exchange point managers, telecom regulators and network operators are a critical to determining network performance, content delivery costs and, ultimately, the quality of service consumers receive,” said Bevil Wooding, Caribbean Outreach Manager for the US-based non-profit Packet Clearing House (PCH) and co-founder of CarPIF.

He announced the dates for the third CarPIF on the closing day of the second CarPIF event.

“We expect that the next CarPIF event will give Caribbean and international stakeholders a greater forum to forge relationships that will lead to a more robust Internet ecosystem in the Caribbean,” said Shernon Osepa, ISOC manager of Regional Affairs for Latin America and the Caribbean.

CarPIF is an initiative of PCH and the Internet Society (ISOC), with the support of the Caribbean Network Operators Group and the Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU), an inter-governmental Caribbean organisation.