Kitz Forum
Chat => Chit Chat => Topic started by: sevenlayermuddle on February 22, 2020, 08:47:20 AM
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I caught something about this on Radio 4 in the car the other day. Seems that Ofcom are threatening to regulate ongoing email provision for old accounts, after people switch ISPs.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51571275
I don’t really see how they can regulate free email provision for former customers. Email provision requires resources including data storage, it wouldn’t seem fair to ‘order’ BT that they had to continue it for free, indefinitely, for former customers. Email has never been free, it costs the ISP money that comes from customers’ pockets, it’s just it’s not so visible as it’s bundled into account costs.
Even apart from storage costs and bandwidth, the provider may one day simply want to stop using the domain name. Even Google might one day make a business decision to drop ‘gmail.com’, inconceivable as it seems today.
Some ISPs do allow ongoing use of old email addresses for free, presumably because that’s less bother than cleaning them up, but I’d be surprised if they actually guarantee to do so.
Then again £7.50 per month, if that’s what BT are charging, would indeed appear to be opportunistic daylight robbery. Just my opinion. >:(
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if it was forced it would simply mean that ISPs withdraw any email service completely and no longer offer it to anyone.
i'm actually surprised ISPs even bother with still providing email accounts.
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You may be right, Chenks.
I’m not convinced that Ofcom have much understanding of the issue. The radio prog I heard (can’t remember when or what prog) was I think an Ofcom representative who seemed to be asserting that, since we can retain mobile numbers when we switch networks, it should be just as easy to retain an email address when switching ISPs. ???
Which is a pretty flawed argument. But flawed arguments have never seemed to stand in the way stopped of Ofcom’s policies. :(
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It seems odd that this issue as suddenly come up considering it was a topic many years ago on the forums.
Don't BT use yahoo?
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The reasons it’s come up is that BT, apparently, now charge for the facility, did they always do so?
According to the BBC, it’s a whopping £7.50 a month. Hard to see how that can be justified. :o
I suppose Ofcom could perhaps regulate that the ISPs must not charge for ongoing mail for closed accounts, but without compelling them to provide it for free either? But given the number of people that failed to understand the extremely useful “up to” speed descriptions, I’d bet most of the public, Which?, etc, would be incapable of understanding this too, and would think Ofcom had forced ISPs to simply continue free mail access. :o
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I registered my own domain names years ago, for years I simply forwarded emails to my isp's email address but a couple years ago I moved to hosted email, which is much better.
Unfortunately the vast majority of the general public haven't a clue about these options.
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i would take a guess that the vast majority of the general public are already using non-ISP email accounts - Gmail/Hotmail/Yahoo/iCloud etc.
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Not sure the vast majority are using non ISP accounts. Taking a recent village newsletter in my inbox as a random sample, I see it has about 40 addressees. The majority are gmail or hotmail, with the odd iCloud and yahoo. But there are eight btinternets, one zen and an aol, so about a quarter of the total. But maybe I’m nitpicking, it’s still the majority. :)
If Ofcom wanted to make themselves useful maybe they should simply be educating people not to use ISP email address in the first place. But I wonder if they’re allowed to do that, or is it too much like ‘taking sides’ with one provider over another?
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i would take a guess that the vast majority of the general public are already using non-ISP email accounts - Gmail/Hotmail/Yahoo/iCloud etc.
I was referring to using your own domain name and hosted email, agreed many use Hotmail, Gmail, etc.
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Not sure the vast majority are using non ISP accounts. Taking a recent village newsletter in my inbox as a random sample, I see it has about 40 addressees. The majority are gmail or hotmail, with the odd iCloud and yahoo. But there are eight btinternets, one zen and an aol, so about a quarter of the total. But maybe I’m nitpicking, it’s still the majority. :)
If Ofcom wanted to make themselves useful maybe they should simply be educating people not to use ISP email address in the first place. But I wonder if they’re allowed to do that, or is it too much like ‘taking sides’ with one provider over another?
I trust you informed whoever sent the email that they were breaking data protection laws, and they should have used BCC
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I was referring to using your own domain name and hosted email, agreed many use Hotmail, Gmail, etc.
I think we understood Ronski, and I strongly agree, private domains are the best solution.
But does that apply to the average member of public? I think if people are daft enough to think an ISP provided email address will be guaranteed to continue working after they stop paying the ISP, they’d also be daft enough to think their own domain based email would continue working after they stop paying the registrar. :(
I trust you informed whoever sent the email that they were breaking data protection laws, and they should have used BCC
You know me too well, as I nearly did. :D
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may i dare to suggest that it's probably the "older" generation that tends to have an ISP account and still holding on to it?
wheras anyone in the the "mobile phone" generation won't have an ISP account.
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may i dare to suggest that it's probably the "older" generation that tends to have an ISP account and still holding on to it?
wheras anyone in the the "mobile phone" generation won't have an ISP account.
Maybe so. Trouble with the village email I used as example is, whilst I recognise most of the names, and I would probably recognise most of the faces and be able to guess their probable ages, I’d struggle to associate the names with the actual faces. :blush:
But I’d also point out that I myself am most definitely part of that “older generation”, and distinctly disdainful of mobile phones, yet I depend solely upon various private domain names for email. :P
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I’ve always used email service providers that are separate from an ISP and used my own domain name not that of an ISP. And I’ve recommended to my customers that they do the same when I was working as a consultant. Now my favourite one has ceased to exist, I just use AA for email, but their email services are sold separately from internet access anyway and it’s not AA’s domain, so I’m not tied to AA. It’s quite correct, the pain involved with changing email addresses is nightmarish and people should set themselves up with a lifelong email address as there’s no reason not to, but many people don’t know how.
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Considering the number of people that post entitled comments about how everything should be free while using Adblockers, I tend to agree. People really don't understand how any of this stuff works.
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Considering the number of people that post entitled comments about how everything should be free while using Adblockers
the use of adblockers is usually not linked to those that "want everything for free".
however that has nothing to do with the topic.
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Interesting this topic got some time on BBC4 money box. You can listen to the Podcast( yesterday). Apparently OFCOM are getting involved in this and associated costs.
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the use of adblockers is usually not linked to those that "want everything for free".
however that has nothing to do with the topic.
We were discussing the mentality of people, how they want everything for nothing and just don't understand the reality of how every service they use costs money.
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To be fair, I think it’s worth clarifying that there are three separate flaws here, in the reasoning of people who want free continuation of email after switching ISP...
1) They can’t count on it being free. It’ll cost the old ISP money, even if just peanuts, and the old ISP might want to recover that cost, which is not unreasonable.
2) They can’t count on it, full stop, even as a paid service. Email addresses depend upon a domain name, and domain names are transient. As I mentioned earlier, even Google might one day stop renewing ‘gmail.com’. Might sound unlikely but all companies come and go, and Alphabet will eventually go.
3) They have Ofcom on their side, which they think will prove them right. It won’t, Ofcom seem to have no skills or understanding whatsoever in the technology of telecommunications, especially internet access. Just like companies, government agencies come and go. :)