Has anyone else been cut off from News groups for the past 3 weeks?

After many contacts to my providers they came back with this last week;
"Many apologies for all of the previous discussion on the issue, it appears
that it was mostly incorrect. Since this was initially raised, we have
become aware of a more widespread issue with authentication, which appears
to be related to the Giganews servers themselves. We are currently in
conversation with Giganews directly, and we are awaiting updates from them
to advise of why the problem is happening."

Then this morning it suddenly started working again,

I don't suppose anyone missed me...

Mike