Bermudians this week have come one step closer to getting mobile phones that can be used anywhere in the world.

The telephones, which will also have e-mail access at the touch of a button, are due to be launched by Telecommunications (Bermuda and West Indies) Ltd.

(Telecom) in April or May.

Yesterday Telecom filed a legal notice in which it teams up with Bermuda Telephone Company.

The reciprocal agreement will mean that Telecom and BTC will be able to use each other's lines to allow calls to be transferred.

"We have to connect to each other's network,'' explained Firoz Kassam, Telecom's vice president of marketing and business development.

At the moment the company, which has been a wireless provider on the Island for 40 years, is waiting for new equipment which will allow Bermudians with digital phones to call about 150 countries around the world.

Telecom will then test links with 360 or so service providers around the world to make sure it is ready for the Bermuda market.

Mr. Kassam said: "So far, so good. We have still got to get the equipment on the Island. What we have to do once that is here is the testing. We are still looking at April or May this year.'' Telecom has invested $6 million in the mobile telephone infrastructure which will bring e-mail capabilities to mobile phones.

The company announced in December it would introduce cellular service operating under the Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) standard to compete with the Bermuda Telephone Company and CellularOne.

When the service is launched, subscribers will be able to check their e-mail and send short messages between phones -- a fairly recent phenomenon among GSM users, who sent 12 billion messages worldwide last October instead of making voice calls.

Eventually, Telecom plans to introduce services that will deliver news headlines, sport scores, stock figures and web pages to the screens of subscriber phones.

As of October, 2000, there were 396.6 million GSM subscribers worldwide -- 60.6 percent of all wireless users.

Telecom is currently signing agreements with major GSM providers, including British Telecom's mobile unit, BT Cellnet, and VoiceStream and BellSouth of the United States.

The providers will offer Bermudian subscribers the same extra services Telecom will provide at home. CellularOne, which operates on a different digital standard, currently offers roaming service in North America, Malaysia, Hong Kong and is signing agreements with South American carriers.

The European and American versions of GSM operate on two different frequencies, and Telecom has chosen the North American version because of Bermuda's visitor demographics and Bermudians' travel tendencies.

But dual-band phones will allow travellers to use their phones outside North America, while subscribers with single-band phones for use in the United States and Canada will be able to place microchipped smart cards in European phones and keep the same number and billing information.

Mr. Kassam in January dismissed claims that Bermuda's cellular market is already saturated. With the establishment of CellularOne in 1998 and BTC's marketing blitz in 1999 for its MAX digital cellular service, there has been a sharp increase in the penetration of mobile phones which, according to Mr.

Kassam, currently stands at about 33 percent of the population.

But in some European countries where GSM is already offered, between 50 and 60 percent of the population own a mobile.