ClaraNet customers have been without email access all day, after the business ISP's POP3 system took a lie down this morning.

Engineers are battling to fix the snafu, which struck just after 9 this morning. ClaraNet said it hoped to have a partial fix in place by 6pm this evening.

"It will not however be fully functioning with webmail settings and stored e-mail prior to 09:05 unavailable. Customers will be able to send and receive new emails as they would normally," it said.

According to ClaraNet's support site, incoming mail has not been lost, but is queued waiting to be delivered. The firm apologised for the inconvenience and targeted 6pm tomorrow for the restoration of full service.

We couldn't get hold of ClaraNet to find out what went wrong. ®

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