Christmas greetings held up by e-snail

By MICHAEL FOREMAN and CHRIS DANIELS

Christmas holidays and a computer problem left up to 40,000 ihug customers unable to read their e-mail for more than two days.

Ihug, New Zealand's second-largest internet service provider, has apologised and says it has replaced the faulty e-mail server that stalled electronic mail on Christmas Day and Boxing Day.

Auckland businessman Mike Gregory drove into his work on Christmas Day especially to check if any business e-mail had arrived.

He said it was particularly disappointing that no help was available from help centre staff, who were away for Christmas.

"It's just not good enough, especially if they are positioning themselves as number two in the market.

"You do not run a business of this magnitude and just walk away from it because it's Christmas."

Another six hours of disruption were caused yesterday morning as the server, handling customers with log-in names beginning with L to Z, was replaced.

Ihug director Tim Wood said no messages had been lost, and all users had been able to read e-mail without problems since 10 am yesterday.

As more people have come to depend on e-mail for personal and business communications, such system stoppages have become increasingly troublesome.

While the timing of ihug's fault meant the effect on businesses was minimal, many home users who had expected Christmas e-mail from relatives were disappointed.

Repair work may have been hampered by having senior technical staff away on Christmas leave.

Many customers vented their anger on the ihug.general news group, which received several hundred posts on the subject.

"If the system is not working in a few days and we have mission-critical work, we're gone," the head of one engineering company said.

Mr Wood said a hardware problem caused the e-mail server to run so slowly that many users were unable to access it.

The cause was originally thought to be a faulty networking card, which was replaced.

"However, it was still flaky after that, so we replaced the server."

Customers wanting information about the fault were told on the ihug website on Christmas day of an "unexpected problem with our mail system" and that it had "been resolved and will not recur."

Another two notices later conceded more problems, but said they had been fixed.

Customers such as Mr Gregory were told on Boxing Day that the server for anyone with a user name from L to Z would be shut down at 4 am yesterday, after reports that they still could not read new e-mail.

By 9 am, a new message said there would be an "emergency scheduled outage" of the system that would last 20 minutes. The outage continued for nearly two hours.

Computer problems also caused delays for people trying to join Telecom's mobile phone network.

A software fault last week caused a backlog for people with new phones wanting to set up an account, or anyone trying to re-activate a phone.

Spokesman Glen Sowry said the problem affected all new connections, including pre-paid phones. People who had got cellphones for Christmas might have to wait up to 48 hours before they could be connected, he said.