E-mail problems continue for Avista customers By JAN FALSTAD Of The Gazette Staff

Internet problems that affected customers' Web sites and e-mail through Avista Communications continued Friday, although the company again said that the system was working. Late Friday afternoon, Chris Dimock, general manager of Avista Communications of Montana, said the majority of service is back on line after the twin failure of two hard-drive systems Tuesday evening.

"Mail is coming and going and the Web service is there," Dimock said. He founded Western Technology Partners, the Billings company bought out by Avista Communications in 1999.

Dimock said the technical problems had "absolutely nothing" to do with computers confusing the leap year date.

"The system that had the hardware problem is a Unix system and it's more complex. It's not a matter of putting in a new hard drive," he said. "You have to rebuild the system."

Company reports systems up Avista Communications representatives at company headquarters in Spokane, Wash., said Thursday that the system was running again, but that wasn't the experience of many customers. Billings Heights resident Robert Harris said he and his wife's e-mail through Avista had been down for three days and was still down Friday afternoon, even though he had access to the Internet. Harris also said their account was only three or four months old, so the problems weren't just affecting customers with long-standing accounts back to the time the Internet provider was called Western Technology Partners.

Eric Hawkinson manages Heliproz.com, which sells remote control helicopters at a Billings store and over the Internet. Late Friday afternoon, he had access to the Internet, but said he has received no e-mail since Tuesday.

"I'm extremely disappointed in their service," he said. He said he first lost service Saturday just when his printed brochures arrived in New York City for a big trade show. Then he lost service again Tuesday night through Friday. Now he has his Web site back, but no e-mail. And he said that's an even worse situation.

"Before when people sent me e-mail, Avista's Web site was down and the mail was kicked back as undeliverable," he said. "Now the Web site is up, but I can't receive my mail. That's worse, because the sender thinks I got the mail when I didn't."

And at Rocky Mountain College, the outage also came at a bad time. The OutReach class catalog came out Saturday and students were ready to sign up on the Internet site.

Rich Hurlocker, RMC's academic computing support manager, said students are frustrated because they can't sign up for classes on the Web site. And Hurlocker said he doesn't know why, but students who try to register on the Internet and can't, don't usually pick up the telephone.

"I don't know why people won't pick up a phone and make a local phone call as quickly as they will click on a new link," he said.

While Hurlocker said he understands that Avista's server is a complex piece of equipment that take a lot of work and skill to set up and fix, he wants the company to provide redundancy or backup.

"There's 'working on it' and there's 'my business being affected,' " he said. "I don't care about working on it, it's supposed to work all the time."

Dimock said the breakdown has sped up the substantial upgrades Avista is making to its system.

"Where we are right now is accelerated to get the upgrades and the built-in redundancy systems," he said.

Dimock said he did not know how many Montana and northern Wyoming customers were affected by the equipment failure.

If the system is slow, Dimock said Friday afternoon, it's because of the volume of business.

"The service, in general, is back to where it used to be. The only concern is that so many people are downloading e-mail," he said, and that will slow down the service.

He said if customers still have problems, they should call 294-4003.

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-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), March 05, 2000