Telewest plagued by intermittent email probs

Hard to nail down

By Tim Richardson • Get more from this author

Posted in Telecoms, 23rd June 2004 11:34 GMT

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Telewest has admitted that it's still suffering ongoing email problems.

Two weeks ago around 40,000 Telewest punters were left without email after a cock-up with overnight maintenance work. Although email was restored to all users, many of those hit were unable to access their old emails or address lists.

Telewest says those problems have now been sorted. Yesterday, though, the cableco was hit by yet another snag leaving as many as 250,000 punters facing difficulties accessing their email. Those hit reported problems logging into their email accounts and sluggish downloading of messages into inboxes.

Telewest's director of Internet services, Chad Raube, explained that the cableco has "embarked on a project to improve our previous email platform with an upgraded system". He went on: "These types of modernisation projects are inherently complex, and do require a certain amount of fine-tuning.

"Although the initial migration was carried out last year, some blueyonder customers have experienced intermittent issues with their email service more recently."

Telewest has drafted in a team of experts from Microsoft to try and resolve the problems. The email problems are often intermittent and are proving difficult to track down. ®