It's Webb versus Web. Or actually Telecommunications Minister Renee Webb taking on Internet provider Logic Communications.

The battle by Logic Communications, and in the background, sister company Bermuda Telephone Co. Ltd., is to make a profit out of the LogicPhone service which bypasses the long distance operators.

Ms Webb, like her predecessors before her, has proclaimed and promoted in speech the freedom of the Internet. Yet, like her predecessors she's found herself stuck in a regulatory quagmire as the new technology swamps the old.

Webb claims Logic's licence doesn't allow it to offer a phone service, which it wants to do.

It's going to be interesting to see how that particular battle shapes up in the marketplace. The battle has been brewing for at least a year. We as consumers want cheaper phone calls. Technology has provided a means that has blindsided the plain old telephone system and the regulators.

Ms Webb, like the others before her, has had to resort to threats of legal action to get Logic Communications from selling its Internet telephone services. Logic has now resorted to full page adverts questioning Government's resolve.

Well Ms Webb is going to have to give way to the new technology. People are already using their computers as phones over the Internet. Logic brings technology that does away with the computer but still goes through the Internet.

Either the money stays in a Bermuda company, or it goes to overseas ones -- that's really the decision.

Cable & Wireless and TeleBermuda will just have to offer their own versions. I don't buy their complaint that they've sunk all this money into Bermuda infrastructure and should be allowed to collect. But why should they expect to be guaranteed a profit these days? What could be simpler and more obvious but to allow Logic and anyone else to do Internet telephony? Then I guess Cable & Wireless and TeleBermuda International will tell Logic to go out and build its own undersea cable.

Boston research firm Forrester's latest report on electronic commerce warns of a coming crisis for the budding sector as global regulatory barriers break down.

Forrester believes international organisations and countries will fail to agree on how they should treat the Internet, creating clashes and missteps along the way. Areas like taxation, privacy, consumer protection and contracts are all troublesome areas that need to be looked at.

"Today's approach to Internet regulation will suffice for national markets, but between countries it's a disaster waiting to happen,'' Forrester states in its `Regulating Global eCommerce' paper.

Forrester calls on the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development to the lead by creating standards for cross-border e-commerce. It also calls on the European Union to shift out of a very restricted approach to the Internet though tight regulation and tough privacy laws. Actually, going from the way I've heard them described, I like the EU's privacy standards which ensures the consumer is king and in control. Compliance, though, looks expensive.

Forrester recommends an open governance model for international regulation, where the policy fits the way the Internet grew. Thus the firm calls for a "pragmatic, distributed approach'' that respects national laws.

The firm argues that regulators, rather than pushing forward a rule-based system, go for one in which decisions are based on a rough consensus of national bodies and organisations. However in one way perhaps Governments will be forced to follow the advice anyway. It's going to be very difficult to regulate companies and persons in basically an addressless world.

A quote cited in the report illustrates this culture clash. "We reject kings, presidents and voting,'' Dave Clark, a founder of the Internet, said in 1992.

"We believe in rough consensus and running code.'' The kings and presidents are not going to like their territories breached.

Not surprisingly San Jose, which is home to California's Silicon Valley, came in first in an annual survey of cities which ranks them according to technological advancement. Dallas, with communications firms such as GTE Corp.

and which is the US headquarters for Nortel, Ericsson and Fujitsu, came in second.

The survey annual ranks 300 metropolitan areas in the US, evaluating density and output of 14 high-technology industries.

Quote of the week: "Expensive security systems do not protect from stupidity.'' That's the message hackers left when vandalising AntiOnline's Web site last Thurday. AntiOnline is a company dealing with computer security.

Apparently the hacker used an Internet account in Russia and tricked the site's computer to load hidden software code from somewhere else. The code redirected visitors from AntiOnline's own Web Pages called "Eye on the Underground'', to another Web page with the gloating message.

Tech Tattle deals with topics relating to technology. Contact Ahmed at techtattle ygazette.newsmedia.bm or 295-5881 ext. 248 or 238-3854.