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ATT Broadband Forfeits Mediaone Domain
Kancer was among the many readers to write with news (as carried by the Boston Globe) that "'beginning next month through March 15, current subscribers with (username)@mediaone.net addresses will be required to change them over to an address ending in attbi.com.' Also 'After March 15, any mail sent to a mediaone.net address will be rejected.' What a pain, looks like they are taking down pop mail and replacing it with web-based e-mail as well."
What does attbroadband.com have to do with mediaone? Probably nothing, they just said to themselves "well we're going to piss off 100000 subscribers by making them change their email addresses, what's a few thousand more? Then they'll all look the same!"
Cuz we all know how much marketing people like to make everything look pretty =)
There'll be POP3, it's just there will now *also* be webmail.
they took away the abilty to use a standard client when not hooked to your actual cable modem - so i can't use mail.app or entourage unless i'm at home.
they will only let you get remote mail via an att web page, so it's no longer integrated into the client with all your other mail..
they claim this is an improvement. in order to let you access mail remotely - which every other tin-horn isp can let you do anyway...
1. half speed since dec 1
2. 11% price jack
3. dns sux
4. dhcp pool sux
5. toy mail
if i'm gonna grab my ankles like this, i at least want a free pair of better looking sneakers.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
right now you have the choice of either. There is no preference at this time.
WebMail is for people who move around and want to check their account from non-attbi network connected computers.
Some people also prefer WebMail to using Outlook Express (the only supported mail client -- although there are instructions on the web for other clients)
Easier mail client to walk the "AOL crowd" through
As long as the mail client is standardized (ie: "We support this mail client, if you want to use another one, that's fine, we'll give you the servernames, but we won't help you with settings, etc...") then it's just as easy to walk someone through it. Heck, most tech support places just use a script they read from anyway - half the time the "tech" is as clueless as the user, at least in "front-line" tech support, where these kinds of queries get handled.
Webmail is less vulnerable to viruses designed for Outlook/Outlook Express
If it's being brosed by IE, it's insecure. Until MS decides to put some sane defaults in IE as to what kinds of scripts it will execute "out-of-the-box", and what kinds of system information and file access those scripts will have, it will be possible to exploit a user's system through any webpage.
Since 90% of their users will be coming in through IE, "added security" is most definitely NOT what they're getting. The Windows Addressbook is accessible through IE's scripting engine. Unless they have people ditch their addressbooks (good luck - I tried to get my parents to ditch theirs a while ago, in favor of a local webpage, in part to save them from being a node for addressbook worms, and they would not give it up. They were that attached to it.) it's not going to help.
What it will do is add a layer of indirection. IE can't be told to respond to a mailto: link by opening up a webmail client - so all those users are going to have to be explained to why clicking on an email link no longer allows them to email the address pointed to.
If you read the article, the issue behind this is that some other company apparently won the rights to the mediaone.net domain. If ATT doesn't control the domain any more, they can't do any forwarding.
Maybe they could also include before resending a 4-line notice that they should ask the sender to change the reciever's address (whether in a personal mailbox, or updating a server profile). Then after, say, 3 or 6 months, it would be more reasonable to discontinue those addresses.
The only reason I think this can become more important is that as more people turn to online bill paying, they would need sufficient time to be able to point the various collectors' sites to point to the new address, and since some bills are only sent out every 2,3,4 or 6 months, this would allow for most billing cycles to occur once.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
I am a former Mediaone customer. My area was bought out by Comcast and they are changing all our email address too. Comcast just bought ATT too... so guess what might happen to those people... Since being on Comcast they have done the following:
1. Raised prices 20%
2. Eliminated all our email accounts (you can call in 3 weeks to get new ones... gee thanks)
3. Mailed us new cable modems and required us to self install them... then bring the old one back to them. (Not that this is difficult but for some people it might be... and bring the modem to US!!! BTW... the Comcast people were appropriately behind bulletproof glass when I brought the modem back)
4. Eliminated the NNTP server completely!
5. DNS servers switched several times and slowed to a crawl when it didn't timeout. (Because I run Linux and that is not a "client OS" it did not pickup the DNS servers from DHCP... I had to call a friend and have him run nslookup on his Win2k machine)
6. Web performance was in the 56k range and down several hours a day for several weeks while things were being changed over to Comcast... (It's now back)
My solution to all this since there are no other broadband providers in the area was to:
1. Setup a DNS caching server... performance increased 10 fold.
2. Register my own domain at dotster.com ($15 a year) and use zoneedit.com (free DNS!)
3. Use my new dynamic domain to setup my own mail server at home... I paid Zoneedit $11 for the year for email backup in case I was down for some reason. Now I have unlimited email accounts, POP, IMAP.... anything I want!