Connecting Central America: The Region’s First High-Speed Network, IXP and Cloud Edge Infrastructure with Navégalo’s Tyson Ennis
An emerging market for network connectivity, Central America presents exciting opportunities in the way of innovation and digital transformation for all new populations.
Individual and business requirements for network and connectivity services are surging, and service providers in the market are now catching on.
Navégalo, a leading telecommunications provider based in Costa Rica, is in the midst of constructing the region’s first high-speed network, Internet Exchange Point (IXP) and cloud edge infrastructure to enable the region’s people and businesses to thrive.
So, we sat down with Navégalo’s Founder, Tyson Ennis, to catch a glimpse of Central America’s network landscape, and find out what exactly is being delivered to enable greater connectivity in and around the region.
Existing infrastructure limiting connectivity to and around Central America
Central America’s existing network infrastructure is no longer sufficient to support local demands, as new technologies and digitization weave their way into the regional market.
Navégalo’s Founder, Tyson Ennis, tells us that there are just two countries in all of Central America that have local Internet Exchange Points (IXPs), which means that operators, content delivery networks, and institutions can only exchange traffic between themselves in those two countries alone.
“Regarding connectivity,” Ennis says, “there are regional operators providing fiber optic and wireless connectivity, but they all provide different capacities and pricing per country.”
The inconsistent provision of critical network services extends to the world of cloud, too, as the few serving cloud providers lack an established regional presence, which “creates incompatibilities between the various platforms and softwares used, and ultimately causes major interconnection issues,” according to Ennis.
Colocation offerings also fall short in the Central American market, where – apart from Navégalo – there is only one other provider with a data center presence in two countries (Guatemala and Panama), and no others that are established in every country within the region.
Introducing Central America’s first high-speed network, IXP and Cloud Edge infrastructure
After taking a look at the region’s existing network infrastructure, Navegalo identified the gaping disparity between what was being demanded and what was being offered in terms of local connectivity in Central America.
According to Ennis, Navégalo’s new infrastructure is connected by redundant fiber optic links and features redundant interconnect switches in every Central American country including Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
Independent clouds have also been set up in each country, consisting of hypervisors, SANs, switches, routers and firewalls, so that customers can store and manage their data locally rather than ‘hair-pinning’ traffic via international IXPs.
Interconnection is also being brought to the region’s data centers, according to Ennis, with Navégalo creating the first network of fully redundant and state-of-the-art data centers in Central America.
Empowering the people and businesses of Central America
The provision of these local connectivity, cloud and colocation offerings has been set in motion to empower the people and businesses of Central America – a now-emerging market for efficient regional network operations.
According to Ennis, a mission to reduce the costs, time and latency for Central American network customers was the driving factor as Navegalo embarked on the creation of an all-new regional infrastructure.
“Over the past few years, we have realized that many of our customers pay high costs for international data traffic exchange between countries in Central America,” he says.
“For example, if a customer has a branch in Costa Rica and another in El Salvador, the cost of transporting the data internationally for transmission is quite high, and that’s in addition to an increased latency as the data has to travel overseas and back.
“With our new deployments, Navégalo can further improve data transport and internet speeds for users in the region, which in turn creates a high-speed gateway that attracts businesses from all around the world.
“This project ultimately allows any company that wishes to establish itself in the region to do so, with complete peace of mind that they will enjoy lower costs, lower latencies and higher connection speeds as if it were anywhere else in the world.”
Driving growth across Central America’s network and digital landscape
This massive infrastructure project is only the beginning of what’s to come for Central America and its IT industry, as it paves the way for even further innovation across the market.
“Central America is a region with a lot of technological and digital potential,” Ennis says, particularly as more and more professionals are specializing in the tech space.
“We have the people, we have the technology and the investment is being made; the regional market will have a great growth that we will see being reflected in the projects that are yet to be developed in the telecommunications area.”
Want to know more?
Are you looking to source cloud or colocation services to enhance your business across Central America and the world? Head to Navégalo’s page on Cloudscene to see what they can do for your organization, or reach out to Cloudscene’s team of experts in cloud and colocation, for assistance with your next Central American or global project.
Contributor – Tyson Ennis, Founder, Navegalo
Tyson Ennis has an MBA from the Richard DeVos Graduate School and an undergraduate degree from Northwood University. He is the founder of Navégalo, formerly known as Grupo GMS, a telecommunications company based in San Jose, Costa Rica, that has presence throughout Central America and clients in more than 40 countries.
Navégalo entered the technology market 18 years ago as an online portal and international SMS provider. Today it remains at the forefront as a technology One-Stop-Shop provider for companies worldwide, providing Data Center, Colocation Space, Cloud Servers, Dedicated Servers, Connectivity, VoIP, DDoS Mitigation and Protection and Managed Services.
