The long awaited sale of long distance provider TeleBermuda International Ltd. - which reportedly handles at least 50 percent of the Island's overseas calls - could be just around the corner.

This was according to TeleBermuda (TBI) president James Fitzgerald who yesterday told The Royal Gazette that the sale was "almost there" and "close to being finalised".

TBI is now one of two providers, along with Cable & Wireless, which provides the cable needed to connect Bermuda to the Internet and the rest of the world.

TBI was set up five years ago and provides voice, data and Internet services for corporate clients and has been involved in a price war with Cable and Wireless which has seen the cost of Internet access for companies and the price of international calls go down for residents and businesses.

In terms of a timeline for the sale Mr. Fitzgerald said he was certain the deal would be closed within the space of the next month or two.

The Royal Gazette had reported in March of this year that the sale should take place within that quarter but Mr. Fitzgerald said yesterday that the delay was not due to anything on the TBI side.

Meanwhile there was news yesterday that the parent company of TBI, GlobeNet that was bought up by Vancouver-based telecommunications giant 360Networks, had moved one step closer to emerging from bankruptcy.

The company said yesterday in a press release that its disclosure statement had been approved by the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. Next comes a vote by the creditors of its US subsidiaries on whether or not the company should be allowed to go ahead with the proposed restructuring plan.

360networks bought up GlobeNet, which owned TBI, for $1 billion in March 2000, but since the crash of telecoms stock and a fall in demand for telecommunications, it buckled under mounting debt.

In a bid to get out of the red, it revealed plans to abandon its hopes of running a global system, instead trying to survive as a North American-only operation and selling off its global units.

The end result was that Bermuda-based TBI, as an offshore asset of the company, got put up on the selling block.

Mr. Fitzgerald said yesterday that the sale of TBI would not be affected by what happened to 360Networks as a North American company - even if it was not successful in coming out of bankruptcy proceedings.

Mr. Fitzgerald said TBI has 35 employees and over 50 percent of the commercial and residential long distance markets. As for what would happen to staff jobs after the company was sold, he predicted there should be no job losses.

"I can't second guess what the new owners would do, but whoever buys the company is getting a going concern and I would expect that the sale would have minimal impact on how we operate in the Bermuda marketplace." he said.

Telecommunications Minister Renee Webb was also contacted yesterday about the pending sale of TBI but calls had not been returned by press time. Earlier this year however Minister Webb had said she hoped any potential buyer of TBI would at least in part be Bermudian.

Ms Webb said that it would be in the national interest for the company to be locally owned as one of the two providers of fibre optic cable on the Island which is used for Internet and long distance connection.

And she said that the Ministry wanted to be a part of any negotiations to sell the company before the deal was made to make sure the national interests of Bermuda were looked after.

At the time, Mr. Fitzgerald when asked about whether the buyer could be partly Bermudian, said: "If ACE were for sale, it might be nice to say that a Bermudian company should own it, but is that realistic? I don't know."