A Bermudian business which deals in electronic commerce payment system has scooped the largest dialup service provider in North America as one of its clients.

First Atlantic Commerce has been contracted by StarNet's MegaPOP -- a privately held dialup provider currently serves 72 percent of the US -- to take its business global.

By next month, MegaPOP plans to have its first offshore offerings in place through First Atlantic. MegaPOP currently serves more than 620 Internet Service Providers, and is signing up new customers at the rate of about 40 per month.

The company has over 800 access numbers from 53 physical facilities, with systems that help prevent delays and backlogs.

The deal is the latest in a string of contracts won by First Atlantic Commerce.

Andrea Wilson, spokeswoman for First Atlantic Commerce said that their company had been given the thumbs up by some of the bigger players in the world of e-commerce.

She added that Bermuda was becoming a centre for e-commerce service providers.

She said: "It is great business for First Atlantic. We will have our first Japanese client in production through this network in the next two weeks.

"The expansion plans for their network are on a global scale. These business deals are a testament to our product and service offering.'' StarNet buys access from three backbones -- GTE, Frontier GlobalCenter, and Intermedia Communications.

StarNet doesn't offer leased access, doesn't sell to retail customers, and hasn't spent a lot of time building a nationwide backbone.

Because of this, the company says it has been able to grow and deploy new facilities a lot faster with lower overhead.

Thirty percent of its facilities are not linked together, but rather use the Internet to haul traffic around the world.

StarNet's Chief Executive Officer Russ Intravartolo said: "We currently have the largest coverage area among wholesale providers, even though some of our competitors are claiming a 90 percent coverage area. They are wrong.'' Mr. Intravartolo backed up his statement with research that his company found after purchasing the US Government Census data.

Corroborating this were additional figures from experts at the Centre for Communications Management Information, which compiles and provides the data used by all major telephone companies to determine termination and billing issues between LATAs, area codes, prefixes, and local calling area information.