Mr. Bevil Wooding was invited to participate in a meeting with the ICT4EDC Project, in order to develop on his interesting presentation on ICT for Development (ICT4D) at the National Economic Forum in St. Kitts, February 23, 2011.
The talk with Mr. Wooding took place at the National ICT Center and centred on the necessity of providing cheaper Internet access and more local digital content in St. Kitts and Nevis (SKN). One of Mr. Wooding's main suggestions was to set-up of an Internet XChange Point (IXP) in SKN. The primary purpose of an IXP is to allow local networks to interconnect directly, via the IXP, rather than through one or more 3rd party networks. The advantages of the direct interconnection are numerous, but the primary reasons are cost, latency ("travel-time of data"), and bandwidth. Traffic passing through an IXP is typically not billed by any party. An IXP located in St. Kitts would avoid the need for data to travel outside the island to get from one network to another. The ICT4EDC Project is presently looking into the possibility to include such an activity in its portfolio.
