"Our problems can be compared to AOL in some ways, but they are quite less pronounced," he says. "Our problems lay with one application, PINE e-mail and not with the network as a whole."

Steen says PINE has experienced a great deal of problems with over-crowding.

"Users of PINE, which is the majority of our users, have experienced delays at times of heavy demand, mostly in the afternoons," he says.

FAS did not have the equipment they needed to deal with the heavy usage, and, like AOL, has had to make accomodations.

"At the start of the year we did not have the kind of equipment we needed to effectively deal with the demand we are facing this year," he says. "It took us months to reengineer our systems and order the equipment we needed. We are now at the stage of installing this new equipment."

Steen says he recognizes the much larger scale on which AOL must work, but says FAS has accomodated to the level on which it must function.

"We have 12,000 [users] or so to deal with, but have appropriately smaller systems, budgets, staff and so on," he says. "[O]ur network itself has been properly engineered from the start to deal with the demand we face."

Steen says there is limited delay on FAS to access services other than PINE.

"There is no delay connecting to the network and our users can get at the Web, newsgroups, software and such quickly," he says. "The main problem this past term lay with the e-mail application PINE, which used enormous amounts of our resources when used concurrently by the number of people who used it this year."

Expanding the Refund Policy

The refund AOL is offering to customers who have difficulty getting on-line is merely the extension of an old policy, Nerzig says.

"We've always had a policy of refunds," he says. "What we did on Wednesday was to announce an extension of our refund policy to include a credit. Since we're aware that most people were having problems in December and January, we're providing more streamlined ways to get credit."

Customers can now mail requests for credit to an AOL office in Utah in addition to contacting AOL though phone lines.

"That should get their credit to them faster, setting up another avenue so people can talk to us," Nerzig says.

The refund is only fair for the customers who did not get what they paid for, Nerzig adds.

"The bottom line is that people who pay for service should get it," he says.