Email Accounts

Just decided to leave BT and move to Sky (it's free for a year and unlimited) and was wondering about my email accounts. Is there any way of keeping them?

Thanks

TLMC

Only way appears to be to upgrade to a premium email account http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/consumerProduc... at £1.54 per month. Your old BT email will last 90 days otherwise.

I suggest you migrate to a neutral provider (such as gmail or yahoo) so that moving ISP in future will not be an issue. You can probably get BT to forward to the new provider, or the new provider to pick up BT email automatically in the meantime so you don't have to look at two email streams. The main thing is whether you can get all your friends to move your contact to the new email within 90 days; and all the companies you have email registrations with.

He can keep it for ever, free, as long as he uses it.
See here.

If he does go for the paid for option, then there is little hassle on any further moves. Just a couple of changes in his email client settings.

Edit - My opening lines are wrong - things have changed. I believe it used to be possible, as long as you used it regularly.

Edited by RobertoS (Wed 14-Nov-12 14:07:37)

As StephenTodd says, and my reply to him. Another option if you consider paying is to get yourself a personal domain and an third-party email service. Yours for ever for well nder £2 per month (averaged over two years). See this page.

as all the others have said, you'll find it less hassle to go to some one like www.one.com and buy a domain (mine cost me £9.99 for a year, and I got my domain free).
This email account is yours forever, as long as you keep the domain live, not used the others recommended here, but one.com has been great and simple to use and set up.

One disadvantage of the free email providers I mentioned (gmail, yahoo, ...) is that every now and then a site insists on having a non-free one as they consider that more secure and robust against false sign-ups. I happen to have access to other email addresses that satisfy such sites (including my BT email). I almost never use them for anything other than registering at such sites, but have them available on the rare situations I need them. If you don't have access to such an address, you may find it worth using a paid service such as the other posters have mentioned.

Thanks to all. I have three other accounts but BT was my main one for years (got the mail address I wanted rather than some of the others) and that's the one I use for "formal" communications. Use the others so I know who generates spam (sells your details) etc. when registering on various sites. Will probably look at getting my own domain so I can get the mail address I want.

I'll monitor for the next 90 days and change the formal registrations to my new one.

Again, thanks for the help and advice

TLMC

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Edit - My opening lines are wrong - things have changed. I believe it used to be possible, as long as you used it regularly.

It must be a very recent change.

I still have a pay as you go account with BT which I keep active by using my mobile to send an email via a data connection every couple of months.

I've done it just now for the grand sum of 20p so that should give me another 90 days of grace!

Edited by IanBB (Wed 14-Nov-12 16:43:18)

In reply to a post by TLMC:

Just decided to leave BT and move to Sky (it's free for a year and unlimited) and was wondering about my email accounts. Is there any way of keeping them?

The good news is that any Sky.com email addresses you create are free forever.

Last time I actually logged on to BTInternet.com was two or three years back (maybe more) but I still have the email accounts which are on auto forward to elsewhere.

In reply to a post by MHC:

Last time I actually logged on to BTInternet.com was two or three years back (maybe more) but I still have the email accounts which are on auto forward to elsewhere.

Interesting.

I also have email forwarding setup but every now & again I get an email from BT reminding me to dial-in to the account within a certain period otherwise the account will be disabled.

I don't get the emails any longer ... they stopped way back and were the reminder to login. I have just one or two people that use that email address - and for some reason refuse to change! Have just sent an email to the account and it was received, auto-forwarded, 5 seconds later. So, still active.

I did the deletion because I re-read what it says in the earlier link that has the strike-out.

The link still works, and I don't see any way there that the address can be kept past 90 days without paying. It could be that people on it in legacy mode can carry on, but that this applies to people who joined after some point in time.

Or - that page was written by someone who didn't understand fully what they were talking about. (Surely not! )

That is certainly not what teh situation was when I had a BTInternet account. I moved to a Business ADSL service in 2000 and had a BTClick account which then became BTConnect.

The rule then was - it is a PAYG account and dial in every 90 days or they could attach the email address to a BT Residential ADSL account but for some reason it was not possible to link it to a Business ADSL account. I continued to use dial in - travelling a lot meant it would happen quite often anyway through until around 2006. I then dialled in maybe once every 6-12 months - access the three or four email account and that was it. But since, maybe even 2008, I have not dialled into the account - one PC does access the email every few days but that is it.

So, maybe there are customers on a legacy agreement.

customers on a legacy agreement

More likely lots of legacy software. It is not worth BT's time to update it; cheaper just to let some people get a free service to which they aren't strictly entitled. I'd be uneasy as a user, because you never know when they might update the software for some other reason and (intentionally or unintentionally) cut off your service.

There are still people on old legacy agreements with BT - I have quite a few friends who are still on dial-up so until they are all sorted nothing will happen. There agreements state the 90 day clause so BT would be in a very difficult position totally kill it off.

In my case, it does not really matter, the users of my BTInternet address are not that significant and they have had plenty of time to change.

Hi Bob, Long time no speak. I still have my BT addresses - created years ago and used all the while I was with o2: I am now back with BT (Infinity 80/20, as you know!), and still use them, in addition to the "new" primary address that BT provided me with this time round.
Cheers, Les.

Post deleted by whitelightning1

In reply to a post by IanBB:

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Edit - My opening lines are wrong - things have changed. I believe it used to be possible, as long as you used it regularly.

It must be a very recent change.

I still have a pay as you go account with BT which I keep active by using my mobile to send an email via a data connection every couple of months.

I've done it just now for the grand sum of 20p so that should give me another 90 days of grace!

Hi IanBB. Do you mean you use your mobile to do a dial up connection? Or do you simply just send an email to your btinternet.com email address and this keeps it alive?

I've just got rid of a laptop which had a built in modem. Struggling to think how to keep my pay as you go account and more importantly my btinternet email active. Appreciate any advice. Thanks.

In reply to a post by whitelightning1:

Hi IanBB. Do you mean you use your mobile to do a dial up connection?

Yes, that's exactly what I do.

In reply to a post by IanBB:

In reply to a post by whitelightning1:

Hi IanBB. Do you mean you use your mobile to do a dial up connection?

Yes, that's exactly what I do.

Thanks Ian. What mobile do you use? I have a Galaxy S2 and I can't find the feature. Don't think I've come across a mobile for a few years that can do dial up connections.

In reply to a post by whitelightning1:

Thanks Ian. What mobile do you use? I have a Galaxy S2 and I can't find the feature. Don't think I've come across a mobile for a few years that can do dial up connections.

Its called "circuit switched data" (CSD) and its not enabled on most SIM cards unless you ask the network to enable it. On my.t-mobile.co.uk I can enable it for a one off cost of £20 and that allocates special incoming numbers to my account so I could receive faxes. (if I was using my old Nokia Communicator).

The reason its not enabled by default is the network has to maintain a modem bank at their end, the GSM network passes the data through and the modem bank at the network makes the call to the destination.

I thought that since the days of ADSLx all you had to do was access it through your normal internet connection, within the timeout period? (To read, rather than send to).

I'm using a Nokia 9300i

In the internet settings I have a choice of GSM Data (which I use for BT) GPRS, IP Passthrough & Wireless LAN

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Its called "circuit switched data" (CSD) and its not enabled on most SIM cards unless you ask the network to enable it. On my.t-mobile.co.uk I can enable it for a one off cost of £20 and that allocates special incoming numbers to my account so I could receive faxes. (if I was using my old Nokia Communicator).

The reason its not enabled by default is the network has to maintain a modem bank at their end, the GSM network passes the data through and the modem bank at the network makes the call to the destination.

I agree that you can get another number allocated for incoming faxes but that is irrelevant to the current discussion.

As for for maintaining a modem bank that is pure bunkum! The only place where modems exist are on the phone itself and the receiving party (in this case, BT)

In reply to a post by IanBB:

As for for maintaining a modem bank that is pure bunkum! The only place where modems exist are on the phone itself and the receiving party (in this case, BT)

You sure? I was told by a senior Orange engineer in the mid 90s, when I was apparently one of 250 customers who used CSD.

GPRS quickly took over of course

Yes!

I use the same dial-up number on my mobile as I do on a laptop using BT through a standard modem on a BT line (can't remember the last time that was used though!)

The connection type on the mobile is interesting though, Remote modem:Analog, Modem speed: 9600 **

Shockingly low speed by todays standards but to send a quick email where otherwise you could be restricted by SMS limits it's fine. I know I can use my mobile operators GPRS/EDGE connection to do the same but by using the BT dial-up number every now and again I am keeping my side of the bargain where I am making a chargeable call to their network.

** Just changed the connection speed to 14,400 so now running on rocket fuel on an old data connection ***

*** And now running at 28,880! Seems that is the limit for data calls unless one has ISDN provisioned (?)

Edited by IanBB (Mon 17-Dec-12 13:43:00)

56k half-duplex? Sounds about right.

On a mobile?

No - at the far end.

I think that I already said that modems exist at near and far ends!

Speeds weren't symmetric back then!

Edited by IanBB (Mon 17-Dec-12 16:46:38)

In reply to a post by IanBB:

** Just changed the connection speed to 14,400 so now running on rocket fuel on an old data connection ***

*** And now running at 28,880! Seems that is the limit for data calls unless one has ISDN provisioned (?)

HSCSD managed 14,400 with a following wind if you had the "latest tech" (ie, 1997 !) type kit. Hardly any networks then supported it - I remember Orange did.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

56k half-duplex? Sounds about right.

PC industry modems were all full duplex, upto 33.6kbps, but with 56k (V.90 / V.92) the speeds were limited on the return path. This worked as the ISP ran modem banks generally fed with ISDN trunks (ISDN30) and the home user just had PSTN.

Some non PC systems used half duplex but then ran over "PC industry style" Hayes modems, so the actual PSTN part of the connection was full duplex.