The Ministry of Telecommunications and E-commerce has achieved more in the past four and half years than it ever hoped to, according to the department's Minister, Renee Webb.

And she lists as her achievements cutting the costs of long-distance calls and Internet as well as improvements in service levels from BTC and CableVision.

“It is competition that has changed things,” said Ms Webb. “(Companies) fought it at the time. But everything we said would happen has happened.”

She pointed out that when she came to the ministry calling the United States cost $1.30 a minute. It now costs 16 cents a minute to dial the US.

“That is a marked difference - they fought it tooth and nail, but it all worked out. Bermuda is very technically savvy and the majority of the population use it all the time, so it is a very lucrative market.

“Seventy percent of the Island's homes have Internet - that is higher than anywhere else in the world. First it was pagers, then mobile phones. Most people have a mobile phone. Now it is PDAs and you can get your e-mail on a telephone. We are a very rich country and want the latest technology. So they are all still making money despite saying they would go bust at the time.”

And Ms Webb is proud of the progress made with e-Government - putting Government online - but had hoped that the portal would be in place to allow the system to be interactive by the end of her first term in office, which would allow things like paying taxes and voting online.

“That was a budgeting issue,” she said about the delay. “But it would have been great if we could have got the portal going.”

She said that there were now two companies on the shortlist and a decision on who had won the contract would be made shortly.

And while e-commerce has not become the third pillar of the economy after the dot-com crash, she said the Island is now seen as a leader in the field after becoming the second place, after Singapore, to enact e-business legislation and she became the world's first e-commerce Minister.

“I should call up the Guinness Book of Records and check if I am in there,” she joked. “We had to market Bermuda as a place for e-business and I went to a lot of international conferences to promote the Island. We were seen as at the forefront of it all.”

Ms Webb admits the “national plan” for e-commerce, which then became the E-business Green Paper, took a long time in coming. She said that the extensive consultation took time, but what had resulted was a thorough document that had been well received by the industry.

But she said that now they have a sound foundation from which to work to taking the industry to the next level.

Allan Marshall, Shadow Minister for E-commerce and Telecommunications, criticised the Government for taking so long over publishing the Green Paper and for the lack of details contained in the document.

“Five years ago we were way ahead of other jurisdictions, we were leading the pack. Now we are somewhere in the middle and have a lot of catching up to do,” he said.

“The document also lacks some figures you would like to see in a document of this sort, such as revenues and operating figures. If you were a businessman you would have everything worked out as it would be in a financial plan.

“It touches a lot of hot spots, but there is also some real emptiness issues such as long-distance service providers and opening up pricing for data.

“There are probably two or three issues addressed, and then it gets down to a business model. I might be asking for too much, but that is what we would like to see.”

But Ms Webb said that she and her department continued to chip away at the problems faced by the Island and found real solutions.

She admitted that while the department had been in talks with Global Crossing about adding a new fibre cable connection to the Island, the company had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy before the deal went through.

Which leaves just TeleBermuda and Cable & Wireless with their connections to the Island and no plans for any further connections.

“We have to have redundancy (back-up lines). And at the moment we cannot truthfully put our hand on our heart and say we have redundancy. This issue has to be addressed,” said Mr. Marshall.

But Ms Webb says much has been achieved in the past five years. “It used to take you six months to get a residential telephone line,” she said. “Now it takes you three weeks. Now that is an improvement.”

And she said bringing in penalties for bad service for BTC had gone a long way to improving service as had the threat of competition from Quantum - a telephone company with a chequered history that has just been resurrected. “We used to just get calls of complaint about BTC and CableVision, and now that has almost stopped,” she said.

“Complaints about BTC have dropped ten-fold and WOW (World on Wireless, a new cable company which due to be up and running later this year) has forced CableVision to improve things.”

And she said that not only had a service agreement with CableVision improved matters, but the threat of competition from WOW, which was given a licence in January this year, had led to a huge reduction in complaints about the service levels from the company. She said that no matter what time of day or night it was, voters would call her at home to let her know that their cable was down.

Minister Webb has had some epic battles in her four and a half years as minister. The first waive came as she opened up the international telephone market and the internet service providers, putting paid to Cable & Wireless' monopoly.

Not a week went by without some telecommunications company or other filing a lawsuit against the ministry. But as the dust settled over the opening up of the market, none of the players has gone out of business - and costs have been reduced for the consumer. But the battle with CableVision is one that few will forget. Following complaints about the introduction of receiver boxes, the Minister only issued a year's licence and the company responded by pulling the plug on its service. Writ and counter-writ were filed and the Island waited for their cable to be restored.

“Due to the high number of complaints received during the introduction of the smart converter boxes in September, 2001, along with the increase in rates for service, it was decided that it would be in the public's best interest to have Bermuda CableVision added to the scheduled carriers list. And then in September, 2002 the department took the opportunity to negotiate a service level agreement with the company as part of the licence renewal process. This defines minimum required customer service levels and imposes penalties in the form of customer credits.”

During the battle, coverage of the opening ceremonies of the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics were disrupted and part of the World Cup did not air sparking outcries from the public.