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 =)
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)
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!