I've been having problems recently with the broadband connection from iHug/Vodafone

Connections to imap.gmail.com from a number of eamil clients on two OS's and various computers fails:

"Connection to server imap.gmail.com timed out"
This afternoon in frustration I went and parked up outside offices with broadband and connected to the xtra broadband there and the problem disappeared straight away.

I've bought a new router here [it was working on this new router as well as the old one]
I've upgraded my plan with Vodafone to ultimate
I'm not on the Red network [yet]
I have a feeling the local [TELECOM] DSLams have been upgraded recently

I've spent seven hours on the phone to Customer services only to be told they don't support using other servers than smtp.ihug.co.nz

No one there can escalate the issue to talk with anyone who can actually do anything about it, and of course no one ever calls back as promised

I was even given an email to send data to that wasn't monitored [faults@ihug.co.nz]

This has worked for the last 18 months and at two different homes [same exchange number] and recently has failed several times, and now seems permanently broken.

Whilst I've changed hardware, this was to exclude the troubleshooting stuff as instructed by the CSR. This set up has worked, but doesn't currently

Vodafone are not being helpful or communicating very well IMHO