10 February 2000

NORTHERN IRELAND CAN BECOME WORLD E-BUSINESS LEADER - EMPEY

"Belfast based nevada tele.com is using leading edge technical skills to create a worldclass development capability in Northern Ireland, integrating e-commerce, e-business, web design and Internet security skills," Sir Reg Empey, MLA, Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Investment, said today.

Sir Reg was speaking at the launch of nevada tele.com, a joint venture between Northern Ireland's Viridian Group and Energis plc, a leading UK provider of business telecoms and Internet services, at the Gasworks Business Park in Belfast.

"This is an extremely important and immensely encouraging contribution by Northern Ireland's largest publicly listed company to the drive to create a knowledge-led economy here," the Minister said.

"Through nevada tele.com, Viridian and its partner Energis will provide locally-focused services which will offer opportunities to our companies to embrace e-commerce and to respond faster and compete more aggressively.

"The company is positioned to become one of the key players in our developing e-commerce and communication technology sector and will also market its expertise to customers outside Northern Ireland," he added.

Northern Ireland companies could also benefit from nevada tele.com's commitment to offer customers a highly competitive single rate tariff for all business calls.

The Minister continued: "It is essential that our companies exploit the opportunities e-commerce techniques provide to obtain competitive advantage by securing and managing information faster and more efficiently than ever before.

"I look forward to other business advantages for Northern Ireland from nevada tele.com's pledge to develop many more innovative products and services for local and export markets.

"I believe that Northern Ireland is now well-placed to become a global leader in e-commerce, particularly in the business-to-business sector, which, according to Goldman Sachs, could be worth £900 billion by 2004.

"We now have a worldclass telecommunications infrastructure, a growing cluster of telecoms and Internet companies, universities which are sharply focused on telecoms technology and an extensive resource of well educated and computer literate people."

NOTES TO EDITORS:

Formed in May 1999 as a 50:50 joint venture between Viridian, Northern Ireland's largest publicly quoted company, and Energis plc, one of the top 100 UK companies, nevada tele.com provides local companies with access to the latest telecommunications and Internet technology services.

nevada tele.com, which currently employs 90 people, has developed a resilient fibre optic telecommunications ring in Northern Ireland which is linked directly to the Energis network, providing local companies with robust global connections. The company recently acquired Creative Online Media (.Com), a leading Northern Ireland provider of Internet services.