Breathe coughs to email upgrade bodge

Breathe Networks CEO Marcus East has apologised for problems with an email platform upgrade which meant ISP customers and other users of its servers were unable to access email for several days.

Breathe has been implementing an upgrade from bog-standard UNIX servers to a managed ISP Plus platform, which was announced in November last year (PDF). The work was due to be completed in four days, but instead has taken more than 10.

East acknowledged the delays had been very frustrating for customers, and admitted a communication breakdown. Breathe networks no longer has contact details for users with Breathe.com email addresses. It bought the Breathe brand after the original Breathe - one of the first big broadband ISP launches - collapsed in 2001, but agreed to maintain the email service for free.

The complications around migrating these customers, and other more obscure defunct domains like iclway and macunlimited, were responsible for some of the hiccups in moving away from a combination of bog-standard UNIX gear and a Tiscali-supplied platform.

Everyone should now have webmail access, and all the POP3 accounts should be ready to roll by close of business today, East said. ®