IP: More on AOL outage

[Dave Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

Reuters News Story:


(Updates throughout, adds details, cloing stock price)
    By Mark Wallace
    NEW YORK, Aug 7 (Reuter) - America Online Inc. (NASDAQ:AMER) 
suffered a service outage that left its more than 6 million
subscribers without access to the world's largest computer
online service for most of Wednesday, according to a
spokeswoman.
    The outage began at 4 a.m. EDT as part of regularly
scheduled maintenance and software installation at the Dulles,
Va.-based online service, America Online spokeswoman Pam McGraw
said.
    A technical problem in installing new computer host
software extended the outage, making the system unavailable to
the more than 6 million people around the world, most of them
in the United States, who subscribe to AOL, McGraw said.
    Service was expected to be restored later Wednesday, she
said. AOL remained unavailable at 5 p.m. EDT.
    "Every possible resource is being brought to bear to
restore the service," America Online President Steve Case said
in a statement. "We regret any inconvenience this may have
caused our customers and we will work to ensure that the
problem does not reoccur."
    In addition to subscribers -- many of whom pay $9.95 a
month for five hours online and $2.95 for each additional hour
- -- the outage affected major media operations, including The
Chicago Tribune, The New York Times and Marvel Comics, which
publish online versions on America Online.
    Chicago Tribune online editor John Lux said he became aware
of the problem when the Tribune found itself unable to post its
online edition to AOL in the morning.
    "We have a couple of hundred thousand members in our area,
many of whom depend on reading the paper in the morning in the
Chicago Tribune online area" of AOL, Lux said by phone. "This
has certainly been a problem for us."
    A New York Times spokesman said his paper posted its online
version to AOL before the outage struck. The Times publishes
another version of the paper on the Internet's World Wide Web.
    Service outages have plagued online and Internet services
in recent months.
    On June 19, the Netcom On-Line Communications Inc. Internet
service experienced a 13-hour unplanned outage.
    Three days later, Microsoft Corp. shut down its network
intermittently for 10 hours. The software giant's online
serrvice had been scheduled for a major power-supply upgrade,
but U S West Communications Group was unable to perform the
work. Microsoft is due to take its 1 million members offline
again this fall in order to complete the work.
    "If this (outage) is a sign that AOL can't handle its
growth, that's a very bad message for the professionals that
use it," said industry analyst Gary Arlen, president of Arlen
Communications.
    Corporate customers, to which AOL has recently stepped up
its efforts to attract, will not put up with as much
unreliability as consumers, Arlen said. "I don't think AOL will
get a second chance," he said.
    America Online's ANS unit, which offers Internet and other
network connections to corporate customers, also reported
problems Wednesday, saying their "backbone" -- or trunk line --
was out of service for about half an hour. That outage affected
about 25 corporate customers, a spokeswoman said.
...