PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad – The theme of this year’s Sixth Annual Caribbean Internet Forum (CIF) is The Mobile Internet for Development. The Forum will focus on the innovative use of the Internet for promoting economic and social development within the Caribbean with a specific focus on the use of mobile technologies and the enabling environment.
The Sixth Annual Caribbean Internet Forum will be hosted at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Trinidad and Tobago from October 29 – 31, 2008.
The effective use of technology for development is an ongoing issue that is particularly
important to developing regions of the world, such as the Caribbean, that face several barriers to access. These barriers to inclusion typically include: limitations in capacity and reach of the existing fixed line telecommunications network, service affordability, low levels of ICT literacy, poor accessibility to information, low innovative capacities, and limited promotion of the use of information and communication technologies.
A prevailing pattern throughout the Caribbean is the discrepancy among the three clusters of Digital Opportunity Index (DOI) indicators: Opportunity, Infrastructure, and Utilisation1. In this region, Opportunity, as measured by indicators such as the percentage of the population using mobile cellular technology and the Internet access tariffs as a percentage of per capita income, far outweighs access to the Infrastructure, and the actual Utilisation of information and communication technologies by the general population. This is in sharp contrast to countries such as Korea and Singapore where the DOI is relatively high due to the balance among the three clusters.
The main objective of this year’s Caribbean Internet Forum is to explore solutions to addressing this perceived imbalance, with specific attention paid to facilitating access to the underlying infrastructure, the effective and innovative use of technologies and the enabling environment.
The Forum will focus particularly on the use of low-cost wireless technologies, and the
application of these technologies within underserved communities in the Caribbean.
The key sub-themes of the forum are:
– Innovations for the Mobile Internet
– Community Wireless Networks
– Enabling Environment
This year’s Caribbean Internet Forum also follows on the heels of a successful 2007 Forum in St. Lucia which saw full participation by regional institutions such as the Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU), the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat, the Eastern Caribbean Telecommunications Authority (ECTEL), as well as the Jamaica Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR).
