Slow Telkom blames virus attack

Telkom has responded to a barrage of complaints about slow e-mail delivery by firmly blaming a recent e-mail virus attack.

Customers are up in arms about delays of up to four hours during the past two weeks, but Telkom says the explanation is simple. "Telkom provides a free virus scan service, but for every infected e-mail that`s received, another e-mail has to be sent out notifying the sender and intended recipient," says corporate communications senior manager Hans van de Groenendaal. "This generates an extremely high flow of e-mail, which has caused the delays."

Van de Groenendaal says the e-mail virus attack has affected all Internet service providers that offer an e-mail scanning service, not Telkom alone. He says the recent virus attack has prompted Telkom to upgrade the mail storage configuration.

"We are copying current mailboxes to upgraded mailboxes," says Van de Groenendaal. "In the next three days we should have a vast improvement in mail delivery."