Jamaica internet exchange relaunch brings new hardware as regulator pushes wider membership

At CaribNOG, an Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR) segment sets out why the Jamaica Internet Exchange Point (JAIXP), first established in 2014, is being refreshed and what officials hope will change this time.

Mr. Lee, OUR’s director of information technology and risk, said the project now has replacement servers and other new equipment. He argued the larger issue is that an ambition voiced in 2014 still has not materialised: shifting the exchange from de facto control by the country’s two largest internet service providers toward a footprint shared by a wide mix of access and content providers. He claimed those two operators have resisted the move strongly.

Asked why uptake has lagged, he said OUR has struggled to communicate the practical benefits of peering locally. In plain terms, he described a path from routine website publishing through mainstream hosts to placing one’s own machine in a connected facility and refreshing material at will once linked to the fabric.

On governance, Mr. Lee said OUR does not want to own the exchange long term, calling it awkward for the regulator to run the platform. Handing it straight to the largest pair would risk the same concentration the policy is meant to ease, he added, stressing that smaller and alternative networks are the missing piece.

He pointed to large neutral exchanges overseas for contrast: one North American hub he referenced carries hundreds of participants, while a London facility handles on the order of a thousand members and moves roughly twenty terabytes. Against that backdrop, he noted Jamaica’s exchange with two providers moving about ten gigabytes, underscoring the gap he wants closed.

He closed by citing World Bank messaging that a well-run national internet exchange can support meaningful gross domestic product expansion—around nine percent in the analysis he cited—and said that macroeconomic lift is the prize OUR is chasing through a broader, participant-led model.