Thousands of Bermudians had their e-mails bounced back after a significant failure at the Island's Internet directory.

According to representatives of both Logic Communications and North Rock Communications, the Bermuda Network Information Centre (NIC) suffered major technical problems at around 10.30 a.m., which affected all of the Island's Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

The result of the failure was thousands of returned e-mails over a period of more than two hours.

Logic Vice President Paul Coleman said: "It was an Island-wide issue. The NIC is essentially like a telephone directory. Our network contacts theirs and gets the addresses so we can send the information."

He explained that communication inside an ISP, such as an e-mail to a Logic address from a Logic address, was not affected.

Any translation that needed to pass between different ISP's however, such as travelling between North Rock and Logic, needed to access the Bermuda NIC.

Due to the failure, much of the communication was blocked, stopping e-mails and blocking access to some locally hosted websites.

"Almost anything that uses the public internet would have been affected." added Mr. Coleman.

North Rock General Manager Vicki Coelho called the problem a "significant failure.

"Basically, the '.bm' domain wasn't communicating with other domains," she said.

"Most of the complaints came from off-Island. North Rock to North Rock communications were fine, but people outside the Island with their BlackBerrys would have had problems connecting to '.bm'. Most of the complaints have been from folks who are travelling."

Ms Coelho said that the problem was fixed by 12.54 p.m. with internet communications on the Island returning to normal.

"We've been told that the problem has been rectified," she said.

The Network Information Centre is operated by Government and Director of Computer Services Michael Oatley said that the problem occurred during a daily updating of the directory.

"We determined there was a problem at around 11.20 a.m. after being contacted by several internet providers.

"Once we knew there was a problem, we went straight to work, determined what the problem was and put it right."

Mr. Oatley said the failure was an "odd occurrence," but said that the daily updating would be watched more closely in the near future.