The Government struggle against the illegal call-back company, GlobalTel, was stepped up with the seizure of telecommunications equipment from an apartment in Somerset last week.

Telecommunications director Gregory Swan said Police raided a senior GlobalTel employee's Sound View Road apartment and seized an array of equipment including a V-SAT terminal and 1.8 metre satellite dish.

And the Telecommunications Ministry temporarily shut down local pager networks' ability to receive international messages to prevent "retaliatory" action from GlobalTel, who is suspected of an earlier attack on the emergency 911 system.

Mr. Swan told The Royal Gazette that Government is looking at further "measures" to combat GlobalTel.

"There are other measures we are presently looking at," said Mr. Swan.

He declined to comment further.

He said the Ministry did not want to give too much away yet.

When asked if GlobalTel ever gave a reason for refusing the Government resolution to decline call-back service, Mr. Swan said: "Their excuse is revenue."

According to legislation, Government cannot prosecute customers who use the illegal service and subsequently GlobalTel continued to market to Bermuda residents.

A previous Government attempt to shut down the illegal service met with an attack on the Telecom's pager network.

"They gave instructions to all their customers to use 50 plus pager numbers from Telecom," said Mr. Swan.

Although that attack proved more a nuisance than a threat, Government suspects GlobalTel is behind an attack that flooded Bermuda's emergency services with hoax 911 calls as well.