WORLD On Wireless has been overwhelmed by the public response to its new over-the-air pay TV service ? and the company is intent on demonstrating that it fully deserves the massive vote of confidence Bermudians have given the firm.

WOW founder Gavin Wilson said some "inevitable but still irritating" teething problems aside, staff at the firm's Church Street office were working around the clock to process subscribers and provide them with the set-top boxes and aerials required to receive the new TV service.

"We started up last Monday, May 31, and were just totally overwhelmed by the response from the public," he said. "There were queues literally around the block for days, a situation that was covered by the Press last week.

"There's been a real steady flow of customers and as of early this week we had signed up between 1,100 and 1,200 subscribers. That's quite a remarkable number and a very rewarding result for us considering that based on our initial business plan projection that's the sort of figure we had anticipated for Month 3 or Month 4 of our service.

"But we also appreciate it is early days yet and we are not anticipating that sort of high-volume influx will recur in coming weeks."

Mr. Wilson founded Bermuda Cablevision in the 1970s and introduced pay television service to the island when that firm was finally granted a licence by Government following a decade-long struggle to break the monopoly then enjoyed by the island's over-the-air TV stations.

He sold that company a decade ago and founded WOW in 2002 after realising the "almost limitless potential" that breakthroughs in digitalised wireless technology would have on telecommunications, entertainment and the Internet.

"As rewarding as our first week has been we have encountered various challenges," said Mr. Wilson. "One that concerns us a lot is the fact that we were having some difficulty keeping up with installations.

"Our installation teams have been overwhelmed by the number of subscribers we picked up during our first week. And this is impacting on the speed of installations. People were requesting installation at, say, 9 a.m. and it was not happening until later in the day. We entirely sympathise with the frustration this must cause our customers.

"People in some instances are taking the morning off to supervise the installation of their WOW systems and when our crews don't show up until later in the day, this naturally causes tempers and blood pressures to rise.

"We have every sympathy with people.

"We can't come up with excuses all of the time, so the only thing to do is apologise to those who have been impacted. This is a problem that must be addressed and we think we've found a solution to it. If the solution works, I think you will see the installations going back on schedule maybe by the time people are reading this article."

Mr. Wilson said school children about to commence their summer holidays might want to think about freelancing in their neighbourhoods installing the WOW system.

"Kids working for themselves could find this to be a good summer hustle," he said. "If you were hooking up five or six WOW systems a day, you could make a reasonable amount of money. It really is a very straightforward system to install but older people ? and I include myself in that number ? are sometimes less technologically literate than kids who have grown up surrounded by computers, DVDs and the like.

"If there are any young people out there who are serious about doing this, we'd certainly be willing to show them how it's done. Then if they make themselves known in the market maybe by putting some small ads in the Classified Section of , that would help to take some of the pressure off for us and they could earn a good income over the summer holidays.

"Additionally, although not everyone is a Do It Yourself type of person, they probably know people who are. I might be all thumbs when it comes to connecting my set-top box and aerial but my next door neighbour could do it in ten to 15 minutes. We are encouraging subscribers to reach out to people they know who are good with their hands because this system is really so simple to the DIY type it could be described as Installation 101.

"If they could get a friend or neighbour to help them, they could very quickly bypass the installation frustrations that we have inadvertently caused. We are obviously very, very keen to eliminate such frustrations as quickly as possible."

Mr. Wilson said the pressure was on WOW from the public to live up to its promises ? and the firm fully intended to deliver. "People are saying, 'You said you could do this ? now show us the beef'," he said. "So that is what we are doing.

"At this stage 72 of our initial slate of 84 channels are on the air. To some people, the 12 channels that are not being broadcast at the moment are the ones that they signed up to watch so we are obviously working to get all of the channels on the air as soon as possible.

"In this instance, the reason that not all of the channels are on the air has to be put down to human error. We were bringing in a new dish to offset some rain-fade issues we thought might occur in bad weather ? heavy rain storms could affect the quality of the signal.

"The dish arrived at the docks but then, unbeknownst to us, somebody lifted up the container, put it back on the ship and sent it back to New Jersey. It's back in Bermuda now ? and hopefully it will stay here this time. Once the dish is installed, that will rapidly allow us to put all of the channels up on line for everybody in the next few weeks together with our electronic programme guide. "