It would be easy to dismiss Hardell Cable TV Ltd. as a litigation-happy company that prefers to tie up its rivals and Government regulators in court rather than actually getting down to business.

But the recent production of correspondence between the company and the Ministry of Telecommunications suggests that Harold Darrell's company really has been hard done by.

Indeed, a case could be made that Hardell is the victim of a Government-backed vendetta aimed at preventing it from getting into any kind of telecommunications business.

It is true that Hardell has spent years, and presumably tens of thousands of dollars in litigation over a variety of matters.

Its deal to operate television services in King Edward VII Memorial Hospital was stalled for months after a stand-off with Bermuda CableVision which claimed it was a reselling service. That was only resolved this year.

It took the Bank of Bermuda to the Human Rights Commission over claims that it had been discriminated against and has been embroiled in the dispute ever since. At one stage, then Community Affairs Minister Terry Lister dismissed the claim before the Human Rights Commission over the objections of then-executive officer Neville Darrell, who is now a United Bermuda Party MP.

Mr. Lister's successor, Randy Horton, later reversed that position and referred the matter to a board of inquiry which has yet to take place, pending further court action.

Hardell is also suing Telecommunications Minister Renee Webb, Transport Minister Ewart Brown and Attorney General Paula Cox over a decision to remove the company from its advertising contract at the Airport, putting Bermuda Airport Advertising there in their place. Airport Advertising is run by Walton Brown, who is related to Dr. Brown.

Hardell also claims that $200,000 worth of its technical equipment was removed from the Airport by Airport staff and has not been returned. That case also remains before the courts.

The biggest dispute concerns Hardell and the Telecommunications Ministry's grant of a licence to wireless cable TV provider WOW.

Hardell has an injunction against WOW claiming it was granted a licence for a similar service to the one that WOW secured which it claims it has been prevented from launching.

Telecommunications Minister Renee Webb had maintained that Hardell had never had a licence. Since then a series of documents have been released that make it clear that Hardell was in fact granted a licence and had only to meet “certain conditions” to get into business.

On Wednesday, Ms Webb backtracked a bit.

She continued to maintain that Hardell did not have a licence, but admitted that “... should Hardell provide us with an update on the material he supplied when applying for a licence, this material can be remitted to the Telecommunications Commission for review and we will consider their recommendations”.

That is a change from last week when Ms Webb said: “... We will not be issuing any more licences to anyone. There is space on the broadcast spectrum but we do not want to saturate the market so at the moment no-one else will be getting a licence.

“We want to see how things pan out with WOW next year before we make any other decisions.”

What is complicating the matter is the way in which WOW received its licence. WOW, which is owned by Bermuda CableVision founder Gavin Wilson and Fort Knox founder Troy Symonds, applied for an MMDS licence but is now set to offer a 114 channel service next year on a UHF frequency.

In layman's terms, that is apples and oranges. Companies that might have objected to the licence application - or might have put forward different reasons for objecting - did not have the opportunity to do so.

So why was there a sudden change of course by the Ministry?

Could it have been that it knew (and was served with an injunction on the case by Hardell on the day the WOW licence was issued) that Hardell already had the licence and that it was determined to ensure that WOW was able to enter into operation?

Bermuda deserves answers to these questions. Hardell may be a nuisance, but it seems to have a legitimate gripe. Any regulator must have the trust of the businesses it regulates and of the public. As a result of the Hardell matter, the Telecommunications Ministry has neither, and a full inquiry into the matter is needed.