Thousands of people were not able to access their email after a planned upgrade at North Rock Communications led to an email system failure.

General Manager Vicki Coelho said the company is currently reinventing and upgrading its telecommunications infrastructure and that a planned upgrade led to the email outage.

?We have dedicated ourselves completely to the restoration of the service and the prevention of such outages in the future.

?We apologise for the inconvenience to our customers,? Ms Coelho said.

?These planned upgrades are put in place to allow us to move our email to a newer and more stable platform.

?We are committed to making our email platform the best on Island which means that upgrades must be implemented in a phased approach over a certain period of time.?

North Rock Communications has the highest share of the Internet Service Providers on the Island.

In a Research Innovations poll on the telecommunications sector, released in February of this year, found that North Rock had 47.4 percent of the market. The poll was taken by 502 residents in November 2005.