Verizon cuts emails from Europe without warning

• The internet service provider has been blocking e-mail originating from Great Britain and other parts of Europe for weeks, and customers are upset about having their communications disrupted without notice.
• Verizon began blocking ranges of IP addresses belonging to British and European ISPs on Dec. 22, according to the company.
• Verizon customers describe the frustrations of not knowing how many e-mails have been blocked and receiving contradictory information from Verizon's customer service, and anger at switching to free e-mail accounts until the problem is resolved.
• "What essentially this policy has done is to make it clear to me that unless they change their policy, Verizon's e-mails are not reliable enough even for non-critical home usage," said Verizon user Robert Jacobson of Brooklyn, New York, in an e-mail to Wired News.
• Ashley Friedlein, CEO of consulting firm E-consultancy.com in London, said several of his e-mails to Verizon customers bounced back but he assumed that the recipient's inboxes were full.
• Mike Teixeira, a blacklist investigator for Mail Abuse Prevention Systems, or MAPS, which provides ISPs with lists of known spammers, said his company is always updating its blocking list, adding and removing IP addresses that indicate the country of origin.
• Wired News checked several e-mail accounts from Britain and Germany that were being blocked by Verizon, and none of them were on MAPS' list of known spammers.
• "Telephony companies are not so experienced in managing e-mail," said Dave Ferris, president of Ferris Research.
• Verizon media relations manager Ells Edwards said he did not know when Verizon would discontinue its blocking of the European e-mail.
• Edwards suggested that Verizon customers who are waiting for an e-mail response from Europe should use alternative forms of communication.