Customers of free Australian Internet Service Provider Globalfreeway.com.au have been unable to log onto the site for four days. The company denies it's permanently offline, saying instead that it's in the midst of maintenance work.
"We're not offline, we're just redeveloping the site. We are in the process of switching carriers and solving technical problems," Globalfreeway Director, Magnus Grittins told ZDNet.
However, details of why the operator is changing carriers and the technical issues causing the outage could not be disclosed.
The site posts a message stating that email cannot be sent or received and that customers should use alternative Internet service providers, such as Hotmail.
"During the outage, email will not be transmitted or received. However, email sent to you will usually be held for several days until it reaches our mail servers. You will not be able to send mail during this time," the statement said.
Globalfreeway runs on the back of an advertising support model, which is not a viable revenue model, according to Free Online Vice President Member Marketing, Jenny Nye.
"They haven't been taking registrations for a few months now, the network capacity is already overloaded," Nye said.
Furthermore, Globalfreeway has ceased its rollout of services to regional areas across Australia.
Free Net, another free Internet Service Provider, ceased trading earlier this year, which signals the difficulty in securing advertising in a free access market.
Although Globalfreeway would not reveal what type of problem the service is experiencing, Gittins told ZDNet the company is taking the necessary steps to resolve the issues.
"We expect the service to be restored by mid afternoon tomorrow," Gittins said.
