Ironically, it was bureaucratic hassles with Israel that helped Maan Bseiso blaze a trail of new technology in Palestine.

After months trying to get cooperation from the Israeli ministry of communications to get his Internet customers on line, the 31 year-old Palestinian and founder of PalNet, an Internet provider, found a way around the problem.

With equipment privately purchased from a Tel Aviv-based company, Bseiso established Internet links in the West Bank town of Ramallah using microwave technology in an innovative way that will bring thousands of Palestinian individuals and institutions on-line.

" There is a huge demand for Internet in Palestine," said Bseiso, a U.S. educated computer engineer. " But there is also a big infrastructure problem in this country. We discovered a way around it."

With help from BreezCOM, a high-tech Israeli company specialized in microwave technology, Bseiso was able to connect up a small network of microwave dishes and dedicated lines that allows many simultaneous users access 24 hours a day.

Bseiso had been providing Internet to his 500 customers through modems and standard telephone lines, a method he says was costly, inefficient, and limiting. With microwave technology and antennas placed at strategic locations throughout Ramallah – including one at his brother’s popular post- Oslo accord radio station, The Voice of Love and Peace—Bseiso says he will be able to bring thousands of Palestinians on-line.

"We thought we could use the technology in a novel way," said Bseiso , a graduate of the University of California in Santa Cruz who returned to Ramallah in the wake of the 1993 Oslo peace agreement after spending 11 years in the U.S.

The signals transmit on a high frequency called Spread Spectrum, usually reserved for military use because the signal ‘jumps’ through a range of waves without continuously any one line and therefore cannot be monitored.

The innovative approach meant he could also skip having to deal with Bezeq, Israel’s national telephone company—a step which Bseiso says was effectively the key to getting his start-up company off the ground.

The Oslo agreement put Ramallah and seven other West Bank towns under exclusive Palestinian control, including control over telecommunications. " Bezeq refused to go into the Palestinian areas to set-up the links," he said.

But Bezeq is still responsible for providing Palestinians telephone service until a newly established Palestinian telecommunications company, called PalTel, takes over. Bseiso said he spent months getting the run-around from both the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority trying to lease the telephone lines needed to link-up to the Internet.

"We contacted the Israelis, they said to go to the Palestinian Authority," he said. "The Palestinian Authority told us to talk to the Israelis. There is a joint committee through the Oslo agreement that is supposed to oversee problems like this, but I know for a fact it doesn’t exist."

Then, at a trade show in Tel Aviv last year, Bseiso met the managers of BreezCOM and the idea to use their microwave technology hit him. " We wondered if we could put big antennas on the equipment to give it a larger range," said Bseiso.

The brainstorm worked. Bseiso found he could reach a 15 mile radius using equipment that until then had been used to link computers in the same building. He says he is the first to use the equipment in this new way, even though the technology has been around for 50 years.

"Even the company we bought the equipment from didn’t believe we did it this way," Bseiso smiled. "We probably opened a new market for them."

After buying the equipment, the first thing that Bseiso did was move his offices from Ramallah to just outside Jerusalem so he could get service from Bezeq. The move gave him access to 40 telephone lines instead of the meager seven he was operating with while based in Ramallah.

Then he planted antennas, dishes and ‘repeaters’ –devices that strengthen signals transmitted to further destinations—throughout the Palestinian ruled area of Ramallah.

The move—made three weeks ago—paid off. Now he saves the thousands of dollars in telephone bills that his tiny start-up company had racked up trying to link directly to the Internet.

And he also has clients banging at his door—including the Palestinian Ministry of Planning and Cooperation and nearby Birzeit University who were denied service because there was no dedicated link—and expects the number to grow to 3,00 in a years.