Local ISP Transact yesterday turned up the heat a notch in Bermuda?s Internet wars ? but with a focus on faster speeds rather than lower pricing.

The Island?s Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have been in a price war since last week when Logic Communications slashed prices.

The move prompted all other ISPs to drop their prices to the same level as Logic, but Transact senior vice-president Bill Dickinson told that as of yesterday morning his firm had outstripped all other providers by offering faster speeds but without higher prices.

?We have moved away from the traditional speeds,? Mr. Dickinson said, in unveiling Transact?s broadband access, now available at these speeds: 150k, 300k, 600k and the fastest upload/download rate available in Bermuda, 1 Mg.

These faster speeds are now available at the same rates that other ISPs are charging for slower access rates. This means that Transact consumers will pay $29.95 for unlimited access at 150k (the rate everyone else pays for 128k access), $69.95 for 300k (the rate everyone else pays for 256K access) and $99.95 for 600k (a bargain compared to the $139.95 being paid by others for 512k access) and 1 Mg access costs $199.95.

There is another key difference between the service that has been rolled out by Transact and other ISPs offerings with the former offering the same upload and download speeds. Research indicated that other providers were offering 128k uploads combined with faster download speeds.

This means that surfers can now, through Transact, get online faster and sometimes, for less cost than with any other carrier.

Mr. Dickinson said that the company had also lowered its high-speed dial-up service ? branded as ?Max dial? ? to $29.95.

Although other Island ISPs offer unlimited dial-up service for as low as $19.95, Mr. Dickinson said that by paying $10 more, customers were getting five times the speed.

Transact started the price wars between ISPs when it moved to lower rates to record lows two years ago.

At that time, they cut prices for 25 hours of DSL access ? then at a download speed of 256k compared to competitor?s offerings of 128k ? for $49.95 when everyone else was charging $89.95 for the service.

Although Transact had had its licence to provide Internet for about seven years by that time, it only really stepped up its offering of the service in recent years.

?In my opinion, we brought affordable Internet to Bermuda,? Mr. Dickinson said. Yesterday, he added that Transact was the only Bermuda ISP to date that offers the same upstream and downstream speeds.

As for how Bermuda Internet prices compare to the US, Mr. Dickinson said: ?We are getting very, very close. Transact is now not necessarily going to look at lowering the prices further but offering better value, better speed, better service and doing some innovative things to allow customers to go in and self-manage accounts. We have to do things a little differently as the ?new kid on the block?.?