Microsoft’s Instant Message Service Down

[BigBlueBall News]

Associated Press

January 6, 2003

REDMOND, Wash. - Microsoft Corp.’s MSN Messenger was out-of-service for much of Monday morning, leaving as many as 75 million users around the world without access to the instant-messaging program.

Microsoft blamed the outage, which was first reported around 6 a.m. PST and lasted for at least five hours, on incorrectly installed routers. The hardware is designed to boost the system’s capacity to handle more traffic.

"This is not the way we wanted to start our new year," said Bob Visse, MSN marketing director. "Something like this is a rarity."

The outage is the second in a week to hit the company’s consumer services. Microsoft’s .NET Passport service, which allows users to log in one time for access across a network of Microsoft-affiliated sites, experienced computer server problems on Thursday which temporarily blocked some users from logging in.