Why MIX

Commercial internet service provision in Malta was introduced during late 1995. Provision, from the very beginning, was pluralistic, with no single provider dominating a disproportionate section of the market. While Internet service providers (ISPs) were required to use Telemalta's (now Maltacom's) infrastructure, they were free to choose their provider of IP services.

This has led to healthy competition on the one hand, but to an absence of a common national backbone on the other. An immediate consequence of this is that communication between users of different (local) ISPs must pass through infrastructure (routers, lines) outside the country. This effectively makes such communication poorer in performance and more costly than would be the case had there been efficient and cheap connection directly between the local ISPs.

The MIX targets precisely this issue, and provides a commercially viable solution which bolsters the healthy pluralistic and decentralised configuration of the current Internet service supply.