How Trinidad and Tobago is faring by regional internet standards

BitDepth#1504

Mark Lyndersay

THE INTERNET Society (ISOC) updates its Pulse rankings of countries across a range of connectivity benchmarks. ISOC is an advocacy body that supports and promotes "the development of the internet as a global technical infrastructure, a resource to enrich people's lives and a force for good in society."

In the 2024 country report, formally released in February, the region's statistics reveal areas of concern.

ISOC gathers its data from a combination of trusted data partners, third-party data sources, and measurements it performs itself.

To establish TT's progress relative to the region, a direct comparison with the country reports of Jamaica and Barbados might offer some perspective.

Internet penetration

More than 80 per cent of TT's population is connected to the internet. Jamaica, with double TT's population, has connected 85 per cent of its citizens, while Barbados, with a fifth of TT's numbers, reports 76 per cent internet penetration.

Regionally, connecting a small population in a geographically homogeneous island should be relatively simple, but few islands fit that profile. Antigua and Barbuda has a 91 per cent connection rate.

Internet resilience

The average for the Americas region is 75 per cent.

The Internet Resilience Index tracks several factors relevant to an open internet, including infrastructure, performance, security and market readiness, the extent to which each local internet market is diverse, competitive and capable of effectively regulating itself.

TT has an overall internet resilience score of 50 per cent, the highest for the region. ISOC describes this as a medium capacity to withstand unexpected faults in the normal operation of its telecommunications data network. Jamaica's score on this metric is 40 per cent. Barbados has a 43 per cent score. Caribbean average: 41 per cent.

The resilience ranking is the estimated cost of a one-day shutdown of internet access to the country's gross domestic product. For TT that number is US$607,307, for Jamaica, US$405,936, and for Barbados, US$66,827.

All three islands are ranked as poor in terms of their "upstream diversity," the number of discrete connection routes to the global internet.

Another factor in internet resilience is the extent to which a country depends on a global internet connection for day-to-day operations.

Internet exchange points (IXPs), which enable strictly local internet connectivity and allow access to cached information, can reduce this reliance, enabling continuity for internal connections if the tether to the global internet fails.

ISOC measures how many of the top 1,000 visited websites in each country is accessible via a local server (ISOC recommends a target of 50 per cent).

For TT, with two IXPs, that number is 28 per cent, with just 59 per cent of 17 registered local networks connecting or peering through this service. Jamaica caches 29 per cent of this data locally and for Barbados, with one IXP (BARIX), it's 24 per cent.

Mobile internet uptake

TT has 95 per cent coverage for mobile 4G, defined as a person with at least one device connected to the mobile internet. For both Jamaica and Barbados, that number rises to 99 per cent.

The average mobile download speed for TT is 30.8 megabits per second, for Jamaica, 28.49 Mbps, and for Barbados it's 90.89 Mbps.

e-Government readiness

ISOC's measurement of how well a country is adapting to a digital economy. TT – 62 per cent. Jamaica – 43 per cent. Barbados – 37 per cent.

Cybersecurity

The ITU's Global Cybersecurity Index, which measures a country's commitment to cybersecurity measured across five pillars, is measured out of 100. TT – 22. Jamaica – 33. Barbados – 17.

Generally, the three selected Caribbean nations track closely in score and don't deviate much from the average in the Americas region.

But the internet is also increasingly a level playing field for threat actors. Caribbean countries sit in the lowest three tiers of cybersecurity development in the index (TT and Jamaica are in tier 3).

How do the measurements for the top digitally developed nations compare?

Denmark scores 93 on cybersecurity readiness with a resilience score of 65 per cent. Seventy per cent of commonly used websites are locally cached across eight active IXPs. Japan scores 98 on cybersecurity, has a resilience score of 56 per cent, and caches 92 per cent of content across 21 IXPs.

There are no ready conclusions to be had. These rankings are meant to measure global internet development and to offer comparison statistics within a region. That's the only sensible way to read them.

You can find all the ISOC Pulse reports here: https://cstu.io/7ff2a4.

Mark Lyndersay is the editor of technewstt.com. An expanded version of this column can be found there