Telecom today announced it would give its Xtra customers one week's free internet as an apology for the email problems experienced over the past week - at a cost of $6 million to the company.

Chief operating officer Kevin Kenrick said the gesture is an acknowledgment of the inconvenience and frustration that many email customers faced as Telecom upgraded its service last week.

"Over the past week, we feel like we have let down our online community and the charitable donation is a way for us to give something back to the wider community."

All Xtra customers will be able to go to a webpage from next week and vote for their preferred NZ charity, and Telecom will then donate $250,000 to each of the four charities with the most votes.

Telecom will provide all its Xtra customers with one week's free broadband or dialup access in recognition of email problems faced by many of them over the last week.

The cost to Telecom of the week's free internet will be approximately $5-6 million (including GST).

Telecom said customers do not need to do anything to receive the week's free access credit, as it will be automatically applied to each customer's Telecom bill from October.

Mr Kenrick said Telecom is still helping some customers who are experiencing email difficulties and will continue addressing their particular issues on a case by case basis.

"We are genuinely sorry for the technology problems that affected many of our customers over this time. We are aware of how important reliable email access is, and apologise to each customer whose service was affected."

"The launch of Yahoo!Xtra Bubble has been a miserable start to an initiative designed to bring the world's best online services to our New Zealand customers. We thank our customers for their patience during this time and encourage them to give Yahoo!Xtra Bubble a go as we think they will find it worth it," said Mr Kenrick.