No extra from Xtra for delay

By ADAM GIFFORD

Telecom's internet provider, Xtra, has no plans to reimburse customers for lost and delayed emails, as Telstra's BigPond service across the Tasman is doing.

Both major providers blame internet viruses for putting extra strain on their email systems leading to service problems.

BigPond said the W32. Swen. A virus, which purports to be a message from Microsoft, had increased email traffic into Australia by 20 per cent since September 24.

Apart from increasing its network capacity, BigPond will credit all customers with two weeks' free access because of the email delays.

It will also provide customers with three months' free virus and spam filtering and firewall software.

Chris Thompson, Telecom head of network and online marketing, said last month's Sobig. F virus boosted the amount of email coming through Xtra servers by 25 per cent, with virus-related messages jumping from 30,000 to 1 million a day.

"Initially, when waves of viruses were coming through we were throttling back the connection and not accepting email for immediate delivery," Thompson said.

"With a spike of that magnitude you don't want to process it all because a lot is likely to be unwanted."

He said while BigPond's problems affected all its customers, "we had some delay with a small number of customers", so a blanket rebate was not warranted.

"We are also installing a best-in-class anti-spam filter which will be offered free to all customers from mid-November, and we already provide free anti-virus."

Thompson said if people could prove they were harmed by delayed email, Xtra's standard terms allowed them to make a claim.

One affected customer, who did not want to be named, said it was not worth his while to make a claim.

But he said Telecom's explanations did not stack up on a technical level. Xtra should have had "front-door" security in place to stop the virus messages hitting its main email server farm.

He said that although New Zealand Post set service levels for mail delivery, Telecom was not prepared to give any guarantees that email would get through.