WILLEMSTAD - The Caribbean Network Operators Group (CaribNOG) will convene its 32nd meeting on October 7–9 at the Courtyard by Marriott in Willemstad, Curaçao, bringing together the region's network engineers, Internet service providers, data centre and cloud operators, cybersecurity professionals, regulators, and policymakers for three days of talks, technical training and knowledge sharing.
CaribNOG 32 picks up where the previous meeting left off in Jamaica last April.
"The Kingston meeting centered on why the Caribbean's critical internet infrastructure matters. In Curaçao we will be taking a deeper look into specific actions needed to strengthen that core. Digital resilience is fundamental to the security, reliability and accessibility of the electronic services we have come to depend on for communications, commerce and public service delivery. At CaribNOG network operators learn the skills and share the practices necessary to keep those services up and running," said Bevil Wooding, Director of Caribbean Affairs at the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN), and a CaribNOG Founder.
The programme begins with exploration of the region's internet infrastructure: the satellite links, submarine cables, data centres and power systems that keep digital services running. Participants will also have the opportunity to view that infrastructure firsthand, on guided visits to Curaçao's data centres and cable landing stations.
The choice of Curaçao is deliberate. The island is home to AMS-IX Caribbean, the regional operation of the Amsterdam Internet Exchange, and to a data centre sector that Giovanni King, CEO of BlueNAP Americas and Chairman of the Caribbean Datacenter Association, sees as one node in a cluster of interconnected Caribbean data centres serving 14 million people.
"The next phase of Caribbean connectivity cannot be addressed island by island or operator by operator. Digital sovereignty and resilience need to move from technical discussions into boardrooms, regulatory frameworks and national development strategies," King said.
The agenda treats resilience as a leadership decision rather than a technical specification, with executives, regulators and policymakers taking up governance, digital trust and artificial intelligence (AI).
The programme includes a full day of hands-on labs in routing security, AI-assisted network administration and local interconnection.
"The labs are where the conversation turns into practice," said Stephen Lee, CEO of ArkiTechs, a managed services provider with operations across the Caribbean. "Everything we are addressing in Curaçao builds the shared commitments operators need to take home and act in practical ways."
Carrying those commitments forward will take a different kind of CaribNOG, and the meeting marks a turning point for the community itself. Network operator groups began as informal communities of practice, but have increasingly become the places where operators, regulators and policymakers hammer out shared solutions. After fifteen years as a volunteer-run community, CaribNOG is formalising to match that role, adding programme management, structured special projects and expanded research capacity. The Curaçao meeting will be the last in its current format.
CaribNOG 32 is supported by ARIN, the Latin American and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the Internet Society, Packet Clearing House, the Caribbean Telecommunications Union, Connected Caribbean, the Caribbean Datacenter Association, ArkiTechs, and AMS-IX.
Registration for CaribNOG 32 is open to the public, free of charge and required for attendance. Registration details and the full agenda are available at www.caribnog.org