Freeserve, the company that likes to say: "No", last night called a halt to new registrations for its 'unlimited' access service.

The company blamed heavier than anticipated usage of the service for the temporary suspension, after existing customers were unable to dial in.

Today it said that Energis, its telecoms supplier, had added more capacity to the network.

You would have thought Freeserve/Energis would have worked this one out by now. Just a few weeks ago,
Freeserve boss John Pluthero attacked BT for its tardiness in getting its local exchanges ready for Surftime - a delay which meant the company was limited to connecting 2,000 new flat-fee customers a day

Two weeks ago, it announced its intention to kick out 700 abnormal users, who were supposed to be using the service 17 hours a day each. (Haven't they gone yet?)

Only now does it buy in more capacity from Energis.

Entirely co-incidentally, at least one server belong to Energis Squared, the ISP infrastructure bit of Energis, was hacked on Wednesday and atleaset one of its server used for spam. Some business customers 'lost' their sites for two days. So under the circumstances, Freeserve got off a bit lightly, if traffic congestion was all it suffered. ®

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Freeserve gets mad with 'abnormal' users
Consumers Association gets mad with Freeserve over abnormal users
Freeserve 'right to kick out heavy users'
Energis Squared hacked and used for spam