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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."

4 of 169 comments (clear)

  1. attbroadband.com as well? by Rackemup · · Score: 5, Insightful
    anyone with @mediaone.com will have to get a new email address... AND anyone with @attbroadband.com will have to get a new address 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 =)

  2. they are not getting rid of POP. by garcia · · Score: 5, Informative

    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)

  3. Should ISPs provide email forward like USPS? by Masem · · Score: 5, Insightful
    While email addresses are relatively a dime a dozen, compared to snail mail addresses, the analogy to how to the USPS forwards mail when you move for up to a year would seem to be apt. Particularly since maintaining such forwarding would be incredibly simple (at least, the various unix sendmail variants make it easy; I'd suspect that Exchange is sufficiently simple as well). In this case, they'd only need to set up a single mail server at mediaone.com and attbroadband.com, and redirect addresses appropriately to the attbi.com addresses.

    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:
  4. Comcast is doing this too... the solution is... by mlg9000 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!