Pac Bell email out 2 days

Widespread outages at Pacific Bell Internet disrupted email service over the last 48 hours before the company was able to resolve the problem, frustrating many of its 65,000 customers.

"We sincerely apologize for email problems that have occurred over the past 48 hours," said a recorded message on the company's toll-free technical line today. "We are happy to say, though, that these email problems have been solved with new network architecture. All our email servers are fully functional and stable."

The outage, first reported yesterday by CNET, is another example of network vulnerability. It follows temporary outages at AT&T WorldNet, Sprint, Netcom and America Online, among others.

According to a message on Pac Bell's Web site: "Our mail service may experience periods of instability throughout the day, particularly in the Los Angeles area."

Pac Bell spokesman David Miller yesterday confirmed the outage and at that time the company's support line was telling customers its mail servers were having "periods of instability." Customers who were having trouble retreiving their email were told to try again in an hour.

Miller said Pac Bell was taking the opportunity to upgrade its network to handle the increased business it has been receiving and would help alleviate such problems in the future.

Meanwhile, Pac Bell was running radio ads today touting the reliability of its Internet service.