jurisdictions with the best e-commerce infrastructures.

The London-published financial paper printed the article headed `Islands look to e-commerce boost' on Wednesday last week as part of a series on the advent of e-commerce.

The article said that with other means of doing business offshore coming under attack, the Islands are moving towards e-commerce.

The piece in the pink paper said that the leading offshore centres were investing heavily in telecommunications connections to exploit their position for e-commerce.

And it said that Bermuda was up there with the Isle of Man and Jersey in terms of infrastructure.

It said: "Within the past few months, several jurisdictions have introduced legislation for doing business on the Internet. They see e-commerce as their most important source of income in the future, as pressure on their other activities grows.

"The Isle of Man, Jersey and Bermuda have gone the furthest towards putting the infrastructure in place.'' It said that Manx Telecom was this year spending 15 million or $23 million on connections for the Isle of Man.

The article quoted Ralf Ohlhausen of Manx as saying: "We could run more than 1.2 terabits per second -- more than the current total volume of Internet traffic between Europe and the US.'' Island's e-commerce boost It added that Jersey Telecom plans to invest 77 million ($115.5 million) in the next five years as Jersey's telecoms market is opened up to competition.

"We are on the edge of an offshore e-commerce revolution,'' Bob Lawrence of Jersey Telecom said in the Financial Times.

It added that online businesses were more able to benefit from the low or zero tax rates than more traditional companies. They were mobile, and could serve a global market from anywhere with the right telecoms connections.

And it said that income could be recorded wherever the computers were based; and if the business was selling information, a very high proportion of total revenues could be earned offshore.

It went on to say an e-commerce group could establish residence for its activities in an offshore centre very cheaply. Buying the `pizza boxes' -- the Internet servers -- typically cost 15,000 or $22,500 and only minimal maintenance was needed.

And while little more was said about Bermuda, it stated that Jersey and the Isle of Man were seeing the development of `server farms' set up to provide computing services for businesses based elsewhere.

It said Payoffshore.com, a Jersey-based payment services company, handled software sales over the Internet. "The most successful products offshore are ones that can be delivered in a digital format,'' Nobby Martins, the company's chief executive told the newspaper.

It said a software business could put its intellectual property into an offshore company, which then licensed it to separate marketing groups wherever the software was being sold. The main earnings stream was the licensing fee, which accrued offshore, paying no or very little tax.

Edward Troup of London lawyers Simmons and Simmons is quoted as saying: "It is already a major tax planning issue. You should only put data offshore if you can access it easily, but the Internet and the new telecoms connections mean that you can e-mail and transfer huge amounts of data. I have had quite a few clients whom I have advised: put all your IT, all your servers in the Channel Islands.''