More Online Problems for Comcast

Comcast Corp.'s changeover to its own Internet service hit another snag when computer problems disrupted e-mail service for about 300,000 customers for more than a day this week. The company repaired its e-mail servers and resumed distributing e-mail messages to the customers Friday, Comcast Cable spokeswoman Jenni Moyer said. The problem affected about 300,000 of 950,000 subscribers to Comcast's high-speed Internet access service. They began having problems receiving messages late Wednesday and couldn't receive them at all by midday Thursday. The ability to send messages wasn't affected, she said.

E-mail received during the outage was stored so customers didn't lose messages. "We're distributing it out today," Moyer said.

That didn't placate some customers. Ken D. Balick said his RockBridge Global Advisors consulting firm in Montclair, N.J., which consults with U.S. businesses about Asian expansion plans, stopped receiving e-mail about 8 a.m. Thursday.

"I regained service around 7 p.m. I was basically out for the entire working day," Balick said. "If I'm out of service all day, it has real economic impact on my business."

Balick said his company depends on being able to communicate with U.S. and Asian businesses, and he probably will switch to a high-speed connection through a telephone company if there are further interruptions. "I can't run my business effectively if the service is going to be intermittent," he said.

The problems stem from Comcast's changeover from its former high-speed Internet service, operated by ExciteAtHome, which went bankrupt, to its own high-speed Internet network. Comcast agreed to pay $160 million to keep the Excite service running through Feb. 28 while it developed its own network.

All the high-speed Internet customers have been switched over to the new network, but only about 300,000 – all of whom were affected by this week's problems – have switched their e-mail accounts over from their Excite accounts.

With less than two weeks to get the e-mail accounts changed over, Moyer declined to comment on whether a last-minute rush was likely to cause more problems with the system.

Many New Jersey and Detroit-area customers complained of hitches early in the year as the company began switching to the new network, but executives said the earlier problems had been dealt with.

The company drew fire again this week when The Associated Press reported that it was recording customers' visits to Web pages without notification, a move Comcast said was part of its technology overhaul and not intended to infringe on customers' privacy. Comcast promised Wednesday to stop recording customers' Web browsing activities.

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Author: 6 ABC-AP