Belco President Garry Madeiros last night accused a corporate lawyer of "scare-mongering'' after she warned that Sunday's blackout could deter e-commerce companies from coming to the Island.

Mr. Madeiros went on the offensive after The Royal Gazette reported yesterday that Linda Milligan-Whyte said a number of corporate clients would be wondering if Bermuda was a safe place to come following the seven-and-a-half hour power outage.

Ms Milligan-Whyte, a former Senator and senior partner at Milligan-Whyte, said many electronic companies did not have electricity back-up.

Mr. Madeiros described her comments as "inappropriate, inaccurate and tantamount to scare-mongering''.

He pointed out that other financial centres such as Toronto, New York, Chicago and Houston had power outages in the past year.

He said Belco could not guarantee 100 percent reliability of supply and advised customers to have generator equipment on standby.

The Canadian Electrical Association gave Belco a 99.98 reliability record for January to April this year -- based on outages -- and 99.93 percent for the whole of last year.

Mr. Madeiros said: "Belco invests heavily in plant and equipment to ensure reliability and system security.

"With respect to Sunday's outage, we were able to restore power within seven-and-a-half hours because we have system security measures in place. In Sunday's instance, an identical set of back-up or reserve bars.'' He described an anonymous customer's statement that "Belco has been ignoring the public for their entire existence'' as "outrageous and simply not true''.

Belco continued to insist that Sunday's power cut was not a blackout.

Mr. Madeiros said 60 percent of customers were affected but a blackout was when "every customer on the Island, including Belco, is without power''.

Nor was the problem Island-wide, he said. All of the eastern and western ends were affected, except Pender Road and Dockyard, as well as some parts of the central parishes, but voltage in Hamilton only dipped for a few seconds.

He said: "Our reliability record is high, particularly in the City of Hamilton, the hub of Bermuda's financial services activities.'' Mr. Madeiros admitted phones were jammed on Sunday night because the company's 72 telephone lines were never equipped for that amount of traffic.

The print and electronic media were contacted on Sunday night but no information could be relayed to customers by television stations until the morning because they did not broadcast until then, he said.

He added: "We take pride in the open and honest communication that we have provided in the six years of my tenure as CEO. We are not perfect, but we constantly strive to improve on our experiences.''