You need to differentiate between "Unable to connect" and other errors.Unable to connect means the connection timed out, which in Outlook Express,generally results in an "Unable to connect to server" error. The details willbe

Configuration:
Account: news.XXX.sbcglobal.net (This is a name you choose)
Server: news.XXX.sbcglobal.net (replace XXX with your regional server)
User name: your-user-name@sbcglobal.net
Protocol: NNTP
Port: 119
Secure(SSL): 0
Code: 800ccc0e

Other clients may produce different errors

The error above should only happen for one of two reasons.

1. You have attempted to connect to a server which is down. We constantly monitor the servers to ensure their availability. If we detect that a server is down an administrator is contacted and the server is removed from service. This generally happens in less than five minutes. To resolve this problem closing/reopening your news client should do the trick. If not you may have an "accelerator" or some other software on your system which may be caching a "stale" name resolution for the news server, in which case you may need to reboot your system.

2. You have a firewall on your machine and it's not allowing connections to the news server. There are many software firewalls available, and we can't begin to cover all the situations you may run into. There are also hardware firewalls (routers), which each have their own management software. The thing to be mindful of is that software firewalls generally block by application name, and hardware firewalls can block by IP number and/or Port number. If you are experiencing a permanent inability to connect check that the application (Outlook Express, Agent, etc..) is not blocked in your software firewall, or check that port 119 is not being blocked by your router/firewall.