Email address potability

sargan

I read the Martin Lewis article this week on saving money by moving Broadband.
A major factor that blocks this for many is non-portable email addresses.
If I move my mobile phone provider, I ask for a PAC code and number moves to new provider seamlessly.
Offcom should look at eMail address portability ... for example I (and my family) have held xxx@btconnect.com email addresses for over 20 years, I do not want to lose these, but BT advise you have to have a purchased BT business service to keep them.  

This should be resolved .. to allow easier moves.

bill888

I thought you could keep your BT email address if you change to a different supplier, but you have to pay for it.
https://www.bt.com/help/email/bt-premium-mail/what-is-premium-email-and-how-do-i-get-it-

Best advice is set up a new Google email account, and gradually migrate to using it over next year or two.  Problem solved.

unforeseen

How do you propose portability? 
You can't move fred@btconnect.com onto a Talktalk mailserver for example. The whole Internet DNS system doesn't allow such things.
It needs to stay on BTs mail servers and as you are not a customer for broadband I see no reason why you shouldn't pay to use their servers. 
Re-invent the Internet to allow that and you can have it

Neil_Jones

sargan said:

I read the Martin Lewis article this week on saving money by moving Broadband.
A major factor that blocks this for many is non-portable email addresses.
If I move my mobile phone provider, I ask for a PAC code and number moves to new provider seamlessly.
Offcom should look at eMail address portability ... for example I (and my family) have held xxx@btconnect.com email addresses for over 20 years, I do not want to lose these, but BT advise you have to have a purchased BT business service to keep them.  

This should be resolved .. to allow easier moves.

It was resolved years ago.  Use an independent email provider like Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail... these aren't ISP specific and you can move providers until the cows come home.

Surely it stands to reason that if you have a btconnect email address and you move to Sky for example it should become obvious that you can't keep the btconnect address if you're not with BT?  No different to car insurance, you don't move your package to LV from Direct Line and expect to keep phoning up Direct Line?

almillar

sargan said:

If I move my mobile phone provider, I ask for a PAC code and number moves to new provider seamlessly.

Very much not the same thing. You'll have a mobile number assigned to you at the start, and after that, it's portable. With your ISP, they're providing you with 'internet', and an email address is just a perk. You're free to move at any time, but you can't seriously suggest that Virgin should run BT email addresses? Not technically possible, and very confusing.

If you want to move ISP, and not be stuck with the email address, get a new one. Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo etc. and tell your friends the new address. Keep monitoring the old one. When the important emails dry up, you're free to change ISP, and you won't have this problem again. Why should BT (or any other ex-ISP) provide your email service for free?

cranford

Ofcom are looking at the charges being made by companies like BT for maintaining email services after customers have left. BT charges £7 a month whereas you can find paid for email services companies providing email  for less than £3 a month. The BT charges allow you to continue with multiple email addresses. Maybe Ofcom should ask ISP companies to unbundle their email services so that there is a reduced charge for customers who do not use the email services of the  ISP.  S

Neil_Jones

cranford said:

Ofcom are looking at the charges being made by companies like BT for maintaining email services after customers have left. BT charges £7 a month whereas you can find paid for email services companies providing email  for less than £3 a month. The BT charges allow you to continue with multiple email addresses. Maybe Ofcom should ask ISP companies to unbundle their email services so that there is a reduced charge for customers who do not use the email services of the  ISP.  S

As I said above, email is available for free from Yahoo, Outlook/Hotmail, and Gmail.  Using an ISP provided email is asking for trouble if you want to move away.

As as been explained above the concept of "unbundling [ISP] email" does not exist, since quite a few ISPs don't run their own email services anyway.  Sky's was farmed out to Yahoo and BT's was provided by Yahoo for a while too.

unforeseen

Maybe isps will just tightens up their rules and decide that if you leave then your email account ceases at the same time with no option to pay to keep it. 

ISP controlled emails are going the same way that newsgroups went. Before long Isps will stop providing email and your only option will probably be a 3rd party service where you will have a choice of a free basic account or pay for something with a few bells and whistles.