Today we are to talk about Bermuda, British overseas territory in the North Atlantic Ocean, located off the east coast of the United States, with the capital city Hamilton. Bermuda is the oldest and most populous remaining British overseas territory, settled by England a century before the Acts of Union created the United Kingdom of Great Britain. Bermuda's first capital, St George's, was settled in 1612 and is the oldest continuously inhabited English town in the Americas. The country’s territory consists of approximately 138 islands, the largest island, Main Island, is sometimes itself called Bermuda. The country has a very affluent economy, with finance as its largest sector followed by tourism, giving it one of the world's highest GDPs per capita. Bermuda's unusual pink sand beaches, clear, cerulean blue ocean waters and coral reefs allure tourist from around the world! Bermuda Islands are also widely known for the Bermuda Triangle, a paranormal place in the Atlantic Ocean water. So scuba divers can even find can even happen upon shipwrecks exploring in Bermuda islands water.

Bermuda’s telecommunication sector is very small: the country has only five television stations, a small cable microwave system, three cellular services, three submarine cables, two satellite earth stations, and seven Internet service providers. However, Internet penetration on the islands is among the highest in the world, with most workplaces connected and a majority of the population having access in the home.

Bermuda’s national ISPs are represented by:

• BTC (Bermuda Telephone Company) – the country’s telecom market leader; provides DSL at 6 Mbps.
• Bermuda CableVision - offers 'Cable Modem' DSL service and 6Mbps x 4 Mbps connection, as an add-on to cable TV costs. Previously offered faster service but this was refused by the Telecommunications Commission.
• Cable & Wireless- Offers DSL to businesses only.
• Logic Communications Ltd - the original ISP, offers services f or individuals and businesses, residential and business DSL packages, separate and bundled, for both Internet and International Long Distance phone calls.
• North Rock Communications - wireless DSL services for businesses and homes.
• TeleBermuda International - DSL for registered businesses only.
• Transact Ltd - DSL Residential and registered businesses.

However, Bermuda is substantially behind most of the other developed countries in terms of Internet speed and value. For example, 1 Mbps Internet connection, being offered by Bermuda companies for $99 a month, may be compared to 101 Mbps service being offered to American residents by CableVision-USA with for the same price. Bermuda presently offers one of the lowest Internet connection speeds in the developed world and at a far higher price than elsewhere, with a maximum speed today of 4.5 Mbps to homes.

A for the Internet penetration, almost all companies (over 95%) have internet access with a high-speed connection, however T1 lines or greater accounted for just 18%. 58% of employees are considered to be competent or skilled at using computers.

Regarding to households, over 90% of Bermudan homes own a computer. The majority ( about 85%) of households get Internet access, and out of those that have internet access 81% have a high speed internet connection (DSL, Cable or wireless).

If once you’d like to learn something about Bermuda, for tourism purposes for instance, the most complete information you can get it on “Bermuda Online in 125+ comprehensive websites” (www.bermuda-online.org). This portal contains everything about Bermuda you might be interested in, from national cuisine and history to information about different kind of businesses, including e-commerce.

Bermuda’s Internet cod top-level domain (or ccTLD) is .bm, that was originally delegated in March 1993 to Bermuda College and was late redelegated to the Registrar General of Bermuda. Currently, .bm domain is controlled by the Bermuda Government's Department of Intellectual Property, a part of the Registry General and administered by CSSD, the government's IT support group. Two year registration agreement for .bm or .com.bm ccTLD is relatively expensive - $499 (http://www.rwgusa.com).

Notably, only in Bermuda huge limitations on who can and cannot use .bm as part of their website address exist. Only the following may do so, according to the Bermuda Government-run BermudaNIC:

• a corporation, limited liability company, entity or organization that is incorporated in Bermuda
• an unincorporated organization, association, or club registered under the Bermuda Charities Act.

These limitations appeared to become one of the factors hindering Bermuda to become an e-commerce center. The other e-commerce limiting factors include:

• There is no ability to access published landline and other telephone numbers via the Internet for people from or in other parts of the world in Bermuda, unlike in the USA, Canada, UK, etc. Moreover, there is even no Bermuda equivalent of the Internet's 411 service.
• All international companies In Bermuda must be 100% dependent on local companies by law.
• Global companies with world headquarters or offices in Bermuda - like insurance and investment companies and telecommunications companies - may operate in worldwide markets but are not allowed to operate freely in the local Bermuda market place.
• The Bermuda Government has its official Tourism web site in the USA, unlike in other countries abroad where governments routinely have their web sites in their home jurisdictions. Most other "local" websites are USA or Canada or UK based. Only a few are truly local. That is reasoned mostly by cost and 24-hour support overseas.
• The Bermuda Government has import duties (averaging 27.5% and up) levied by the Government on computers, modems, peripherals, routers and all other relevant electronics. They are the highest in the Western Hemisphere.
• The license fees paid to the Bermuda Government by ISPs and others directly or indirectly are the highest fees and taxes per square mile of territory imposed by any country anywhere for telecommunications.
• The very high Cost of Living, 2-3 times higher than in US and UK.
Nevertheless, Bermuda promotes itself as an e-commerce hub and has established leadership in niche areas such as multi-currency platforms.

The government presented e-commerce-enabling legislation in 1999, matching the initial step towards putting as much of its business as possible online. In 2002, Bermuda introduced new Government regulations on how companies issue digital certificates for online transactions, which represent a significant step forward in the development of e-business in Bermuda. The government has also created a Bermuda Commercial Digital Certification Authority.

In 1999, TeleBermuda International opened its centre staffed 24/7. TBI supplies secure website hosting services for companies targeting to conduct e-commerce from Bermuda.

Cable & Wireless shortly afterwards opened its sixth world-wide 'platform' offering web-hosting, e-commerce and other Internet services in Devonshire, Bermuda - the other five centres are in London, Washington, Bahrein, Sydney and Hong Kong.

Most of national ISPs are offering varying levels of support to offshore businesses, such as 'Partial hosting', that includes the provision of payment pages on secure facilities in Bermuda, saving the expense of purchasing and maintaining a secure server, routers, firewalls, and transaction gateway; and 'Total hosting' that involves the supply of secure facilities to co-locate a client’s own technology solutions, or provision of a complete e-commerce package including access to the Internet and transaction processing. Local providers can also assist with the procurement, importation, and installation of client hardware.

Several e-commerce providers rent “electronic stores” to enable digital businesses to operate from Bermuda without incorporating a company on the island. Every “electronic store” has separate assets and liabilities, as well as separate bank accounts, and must operate under the terms of a user agreement.

The first Bermuda-based payment solutions provider, First Atlantic Commerce (FAC), was established in 1998 to create secure card-based payment solutions for e-businesses. FAC supplies powerful technology designed to work with most merchant platforms - a feature-rich payment system called cGate® -- offers service, flexibility and security to adapt to many business and bank acquirer requirements. FAC offers international payment solutions in many jurisdictions across the Latin American Caribbean Region, Europe and Pan Asian Region. In 2006, FAC announced further expansion of its network of referral companies, and is offering multi-currency residual income streams for applicable approved merchants in EUROs, USD, and Pounds Sterling. In April, 2009, First Atlantic Commerce announced that it had once again achieved compliance with the 2009 Payment Card Industry – Data Security Standard (PCI –DSS), a multi-faceted security standard that includes requirements for security management, policies, procedures, network architecture, software design and other critical protective measures (www.lowtax.net).

Quo Vadis, a Bermuda-based digital certificate provider company, was the first company to seek CSP approval. In 2004, QuoVadis announced that it had been accepted into Microsoft's Root Certificate Program. This means that the firm's public root key will be distributed to all users of Microsoft's Windows operating system, allowing them to utilise digital certificates provided by QuoVadis for encryption, electronic signatures, and access control. Later the same year, Quo Vadis revealed that it had been retained by the government of Bermuda to provide digital identity services as part of its ongoing e-Government Portal Project. 

Apart from payment processing facilities offered by local hosting services utilising software and systems acquired from industry sources, or accessed via Applications Service Provider links, two of Bermuda's banks have entered partnerships to set up international payment processing solutions. Thus, the Bank of Butterfield has teamed with a local e-commerce payment provider to offer e-commerce payment solutions for local and international merchants through a new company called Promisant. Meanwhile, the Bank of Bermuda, partnered Bermuda-based First Ecom.com in providing the FEDS Payment Processing Solution. FEDS grants banks the authority to provide their merchants with access to the Processing Solution, which provides a wide range of new services for researching, retrieving and archiving the data associated with the transactions processed on behalf of the banks and their merchants (www.lowtax.net).

Bermuda…The islands, that pretend to be named as an “earthy heaven” and claim to be one of the most wonderful places around the world, are also composing the country striving to become one of the e-commerce centers. And it seems, Bermuda will manage to lead the world e-commerce sector, but only when all the limitations are removed.