We have discovered that at around 15:00GMT today the POP3/IMAP service failed. This meant that POP3/IMAP connections were being rejected by the mail server.

This was rectified at 17:04GMT. The cause of the outage is currently unknown and is being investigated. We are also investigating why our notification script which periodically logs in to the POP3 server failed to notify us of the error.

An investigation is now taking place.

Further details will be forthcoming.

Following our update to Helm 3.2.14 we have noticed that the bandwidth usage is being over reported within Helm.

We do not know why this has occured and have asked the Helm developers to look in to this problem.

In the meantime we have suspended the reporting of all bandwidth usage and reset all usage data within Helm to zero to prevent customers being over charged.

Disk space usage is being reported within Helm correctly.

OFCOM have at last managed to pull their weight and issue new rules to ISPs regarding the moving of broadband suppliers. Previously suppliers could effectively hold consumers and businesses to ransom by witholding the MAC code required to switch providers or charge high fees to force the user in to staying.

From the 14th February firms must supply a MAC code within 5 days of the request and they are not allowed to charge for the code either.

A breach of the rules could mean a fine being imposed by OFCOM of up to 10% annual turnover.

After an update early this morning Helm is now reporting dispace and bandwidth usage. However due to a rounding issue the figures are not currently accurate.

We will not be issuing any over usage invoices based on these figures until the issue is resolved.

The Helm system is currently under reporting both disk and bandwidth usage data. The Helm developers are working on a fix.

Until this time we ask that clients and resellers do not rely on the data in Helm as an accurate reflection of their usage.

From approximately 20:00GMT Saturday 3rd February 2006 the mail server began producing errors when customers attempted to check mail via POP3 or IMAP.

We did not become aware of the problem until approximately 10:00GMT Monday 5th February 2006. The problem was then resolved by 10:05GMT Monday 5th February 2006.

During the entire period the mail server continued to receive incoming mail and web mail access continued to be available.

Our monitoring system failed to indicate there was an error as it works via checking the appropriate system ports are responding. In this case the system continued to respond and the error was actually during the authentication process therefore not detectable by our system monitoring.