20 STATES TRY TO REACH ACCESS DEAL WITH AOL.

Byline: David E. Kalish Associated Press 

Consumer-protection officials from 20 states met with America Online on Thursday to try to resolve a rash of complaints against the nation's largest on-line service - even as a fresh technical glitch further irked its customers.

The meeting in Chicago, which ended Thursday afternoon, was spurred by customers' growing difficulty in getting the on-line access they paid for. A new pricing plan that charges customers $19.95 a month for unlimited on-line time has strained AOL's network, creating long delays in going on line, busy signals and other frustrations.

The representatives from 20 state attorneys general offices tried to get the company to ``give some relief to AOL customers who feel the company is not living up to its pledge,'' said Dan Curry, a spokesman for Illinois Attorney General Jim Ryan, whose office hosted the meeting.

While details from the meeting weren't disclosed, representatives from states said the ball was in America Online's court.

``We're waiting for AOL's response,'' said Carolyn Ham, an assistant attorney general from Minnesota.

The issue wasn't expected to be resolved until at least next week.

Indeed, the latest brownout to hit America Online only heightened concerns about AOL's ability to accommodate a flood of new users. A power outage prevented the company's customers from receiving e-mail for two hours Thursday morning, the company said.

The trouble, which started at 4:15 a.m., was triggered by work on the company's computers intended to increase the system's capacity to handle the surge in on-line usage.

Just last week, users of AOL experienced two episodes of technical glitches. At least five lawsuits have been filed by consumers against AOL this past month that accuse the company of breaching its contract with subscribers and engaging in deceptive marketing.

Curry and others declined to comment on the nature of any proposed settlement with America Online. But a source close to the talks, speaking on condition of anonymity, said some states were interested in trying to get AOL to refund some money to customers.

AOL declined through a spokeswoman to elaborate on the meeting, other than to call it ``a good constructive meeting'' and said the company was ``cooperating'' and working with the attorneys general.

Any agreement would be America Online's second in two months with state attorneys general. Last month, America Online agreed to revise its new pricing strategy in a settlement with 19 states that followed complaints from subscribers that they weren't given enough notice when automatically switched to the new flat-rate plan for unlimited Internet access.

Thursday's e-mail brownout was triggered by the installation of new computer hardware to increase AOL's capacity. The company had scheduled to bring its entire system off line at 2 a.m. for two hours to install the equipment. But when technicians tried to bring back service at about 4 a.m., a problem in the system's power supply prevented e-mail from being restored, said AOL spokeswoman Tricia Primrose.

E-mail was restored at 6:15 a.m., Primrose said.

She described the problem as minor and said that, overall, AOL had reduced planned and unplanned downtime to 1 percent from 3.5 percent last year.

One of AOL's biggest rivals tried to exploit the company's woes. A new television commercial for CompuServe breaking in Sunday's Super Bowl stresses the theme that people can get on-line access through CompuServe on the first try ``97 percent of the time,'' said Scott Kauffman, CompuServe's vice president of Interactive Services.

Meanwhile, in a Washington hearing, federal regulators began exploring ways to ease network congestion by giving companies incentives to provide more high-speed connections into homes.

The Federal Communications Commission didn't lay out any proposals, but used the hearing to collect information.

The congestion issue has pitted Internet providers and computer companies against some of the nation's local Bell telephone companies, notably Pacific Telesis and Bell Atlantic.

The phone companies contend that soaring Internet usage could cause a breakdown in the public telephone network. They want America Online and other Internet providers to pay them for using local lines.