LACNIC meets organizations and authorities in Suriname and Guyana

31/07/2017

Major public and private Internet organizations of Suriname and Guyana are planning to deploy IPv6 by the end of 2017 or early 2018, a service that will be available to end users in both countries, as Oscar Robles, LACNIC CEO, and Kevon Swift, Head of Strategic Relations and Integration at LACNIC, were able to confirm during their meetings with politicians, regulators, officials and directors of telecommunication companies and Internet service providers in these Caribbean countries.

Robles and Swift visited decision-makers in Suriname and Guyana, as well as Caribbean public sector leaders and private operators in early July following their participation in the Suriname Caribbean Cybersecurity & Cyberdrill.

While in these two countries IPv6 traffic is still in its infancy, the meetings between LACNIC representatives and political leaders and telecommunication sector representatives showed that they have been planning and working towards deploying IPv6 in the near future, Swift commented.

Meetings were held with representatives of Suriname’s Telecommunications Authority; telecommunications company Telesur; Suriname’s National Assembly; Ashwin Adhin, Vice-President of Suriname; Internet Service Provider ParboNet NV; Guyana’s E-Government Agency; Guyana Telephone & Telegraph (GTT); and Catherine Hughe, Guyana’s Minister of Telecommunications.

In each of the meetings, LACNIC CEO Oscar Robles stressed that “IPv6 is no longer a technical debate but a strategic debate as it relates to Internet quality and development in our countries.”

According to LACNIC statistics, the amount of IPv6 space already assigned to most operators in Suriname and Guyana is enough to allow the effective deployment of the protocol.

“A positive takeaway from these meetings is that we have already moved past the financial discussions and that decision-makers now know this is no longer a technical argument but a strategic argument for operators,” Swift added.

During the meetings with public leaders, LACNIC emphasized the actions that public agencies can take to promote IPv6 through internal regulations and public policies for procuring and/or importing IPv6-enabled equipment.

At private level, companies are modifying their core networks and will soon be ready to enable IPv6 access on customer devices. “The news we received were good news,” Swift concluded.