After Verizon officially transferred ownership of their Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont networks last weekend to Fairpoint Communications, countless users experienced an inability to access their e-mail. Despite's Fairpoint's insistence last weekend that they're working to resolve the problem, posts to our Fairpoint forum indicate that customers still can't access e-mail a week later. A repeated complaint from users is they can't access Fairpoint technical support -- the company's support line is endlessly busy, and support chat requests via the company's website consistently go unanswered. Fairpoint, meanwhile, insists to us that complaint rates are dropping.

Fairpoint is getting ready for the repeatedly delayed complete takeover of Verizon's DSL and landline networks in New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine. Customers are being informed via e-mail that they'll only be able to access their AOL/Yahoo/MSN Verizon webmail until February 6, after which they'll have to log into www.MyFairpoint.net for ISP e-mail. Interestingly, a clumsily worded notice and follow up report on this by the Rutland Herald seems to have convinced Slashdot readers that Fairpoint is violating network neutrality by blocking access to third party webmail services. That's not the case -- Verizon customers are simply losing access to IMAP-based ISP-email through third party webmail vendors.

User lev writes in to note that AT&T has sent an e-mail to its subscribers (full e-mail below the break) informing them that as of January 31, AT&T Internet users will no longer receiver Flickr Pro accounts. Flickr Pro accounts will be downgraded to regular Flickr accounts -- and all the restrictions that involves -- unless users are willing to pay $24.95 per year to upgrade.

Yesterday we noted that AT&T's spam filters have been getting a little aggressive, eliminating legit e-mail alongside spam. AT&T tells us mail delivery was impacted due to "an unexpected error" that occurred during a maintenance update. "The impact was on a small percentage of messages compared to the overall e-mail volume," AT&T's Jenny Parker tells us. "AT&T quickly realized this error and began immediate efforts to restore e-mail delivery to normal conditions." According to Parker, users who continue to struggle with mail delivery can fill out this form.

AT&T users over the last week started noticing that they were receiving significantly less spam in their inboxes thanks to a new spam filter. They then started noticing they were receiving significantly less mail, too. Users say that AT&T techs appear to be aware of the problem. We've fired off an inquiry to AT&T for an official explanation. Meanwhile, there's a scuff up brewing over the fact that Yahoo's "unlimited" e-mail does in fact have very real limits.

Google is taking aim at the potential Microsoft & Yahoo merger over at the Google blog, suggesting the company will exert "the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC." With the control of so many instant message and e-mail accounts, the company fears they'll use that leverage to apply their 90's strangehold all over again.Of course Microsoft was asking the same questions when Google recently acquired Doubleclick. Microsoft responded to Google's arguments by saying that a merger with Yahoo would create a "compelling number two competitor for Internet search and online advertising" to market leader Google.

Charter customers this week inform us that the company accidentally deleted the e-mail content from 14,000 of Charter's 2.5 million user e-mail accounts. What's more, Charter apparently lacks any backups for the lost data, so if you had important e-mail in those accounts, it will be surfing digital oblivion, forever.

Roadrunner is telling cable broadband customers in New York and New Jersey that their e-mail will soon be getting an upgrade. According to the company, users should soon see increased storage, more mailboxes, improved spam filters and a new webmail GUI. Standard customers will now get ten mailboxes and two gigs of storage, while Turbo users will be getting twenty five mailboxes and five gigs of storage. The company says parental controls will also be getting an upgrade.

Hushmail offers encrypted e-mail services for the paranoid and/or privacy conscious. The company uses cryptographic and encryption protocols OpenPGP and AES 256 to scramble the contents of messages stored on their servers.

The post office will forward your mail to your new address when you move, and wireless phone carriers are required to port your number to your next provider. So should ISPs be forced to forward your mail to your new ISP? The FCC is exploring the requirement after an AOL customer claims she lost important business revenue when AOL canceled her account due to miscommunication.

Google is working on integrating IMAP support into Gmail, a long-requested feature for those frequently accessing mail from multiple devices. IMAP support docs have suddenly shown up on the GMail site, and some say IMAP support is already active in their accounts. "Don't fret if you don't see 'IMAP Access' yet under the Settings menu," says the company. "We're rolling it out to everyone over the next few days." Apparently, some users are seeing the update if they log out of Gmail and then log back in again.

NTP, fresh off their $612 million patent victory against RIM, is back at it again. This time their target is wireless operators like Verizon, Sprint, AT&T and T-Mobile, who the company claims are infringing on some of their patents related to sending e-mail to wireless devices.

It appears the folks at Verizon are getting ready to announce a few more FiOS features, including the ability to check your FiOS e-mail via mobile phone and a bump for e-mail storage to 4GB. It looks like access to FiOS e-mail will be made possible via a new drag-and-drop app that will be downloadable from their "Get it Now" section:It looks like the service could also be headed to DSL customers sometime down the line. This clearly aims to do battle with Sprint and cable's co-branded Pivot service, which has seen very slow deployment. Verizon insiders confirm these details with us, and there should be an announcement shortly.

Last year when AOL and Yahoo announced they'd be using Goodmail's CertifiedEmail solution, which charges mass mailers (and non-profits) a small surcharge to bypass spam filters, there was significant outrage. A few months ago, Verizon, Comcast, Cox and Time Warner Cable also implemented the system, though this time around outrage seemed largely muted.

AT&T/Yahoo users in our AT&T forum lament that AT&T and Yahoo have started pushing ads to customers via their beta webmail service. "The advertising is a needed step towards providing world class service at an affordable price," an AT&T representative tells an irked user. Obviously, ad-blocking software cures the problem rather quickly, but several users are annoyed on principle.

Last year when AOL and Yahoo announced they'd be using Goodmail's CertifiedEmail solution, which charges mass mailers (and non-profits) a small surcharge to bypass spam filters, there was significant outrage. Last week, Verizon, Comcast, Cox and Time Warner Cable implemented the system, and so far there's a general lack of concern, at least judging from the newswires.

As hinted at yesterday, Verizon has announced that they've implemented GoodMail's "Certified Email" system, which charges marketers and mass mailers a fee to bypass an ISP's spam filters. To become a "certified" mass mailer, companies pay around a quarter of a penny per message sent -- with half of those fees going to the ISP.

Last year AOL and Yahoo implemented a new spam protection model (Goodmail's CertifiedEmail) that allowed "legit" spammers to pay a fee in order to bypass their spam filters and reach customers. At the time, groups like the EFF and Spamhaus railed against the plan, the latter suggesting the idea would "destroy the spirit of the Internet." While the debate over the practice has quieted down, expect it to heat up again tomorrow with the announcement that Comcast, Cox, Roadrunner/TWC and Verizon will be implementing the system.

According to the Google blog, Google has started offering their application suite (GMail, Google Calender) as a re-brandable suite to ISPs (aka a Partner Edition). "You can quit spending your resources and time on applications like webmail -- and leave the work to our busy bees at the Googleplex," says the company. APC Mag (via Slashdot) wonders if it's a good idea. Of course, not everybody is sure that ISPs spending money on developing portals themselves is a good idea, either.

Comcast is gearing up to offer their broadband customers a new browser-based webmail and messenger service with the open source Zimbra suite at its core, notes ZDNet. Dubbed SmartZone, the new webmail service should launch later this year.