All Sections

BE Broadband users to lose email addresses in Sky takeover

Sky is set to axe BE Broadband email addresses when it finishes migrating customers in Spring 2014, while O2 broadband users will be stuck with a 20MB inbox cap.

The broadband and TV giant is about to begin swapping BE and O2 customers onto its network to become part of Sky Broadband Unlimited and Sky Talk.

BE customers will be able to keep their existing routers, but an update to the Sky migration page – spotted by ISPReview – says their email addresses are living on borrowed time.

BE Broadband losers to lose email addresses in Sky takeover
Sky’s eating up BE’s email service as part of its takeover

Read Recombu Digital’s guide to the Sky O2/BE takeoverThe FAQs read: “From Spring 2014, customers who have joined us from BE (or stayed on that service) will no longer be able to use their BE email address.”

O2 customers won’t lose their email addresses (‘for the time being’, says Sky) but once they migrate to Sky, there will be a 20MB inbox limit, soon filled up with the photo and document attachments we all take for granted.

“If your O2 inbox exceeds this, you will need to remove some emails and stay under this limit to continue to receive emails,” the FAQ continues.

“We’ll write to you nearer the time that these O2 or BE services will no longer be available to you and let you know what you need to do to make sure you don’t lose any important emails.”

The replacement for Sky’s new customers will be an unlimited-capacity Sky email account with a ‘sky.com’ address (bskyb.com addresses are for its employees).

Alternatively, you can get a free webmail account from Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft Outlook, Apple, or many smaller providers, and then all you have to worry about is the provider scanning your email to find keywords they can advertise against.

Or as A&AISP co-founder Adrian Kennard blogged under his RevK pseudonym: “I suppose that these days using hotmail or gmail is probably fairly safe as a personal email address. At least you can change ISP when you like.

“But the best thing to do is get your own domain. It is not hard to get one for the whole family, though common surnames have often gone. Domain names can be moved between ISPs/email providers if needed.”

A&A will be moving its mostly commercial customers from BE Broadband’s backhaul network to TalkTalk because of ‘uncertainty over the Sky take over’ and ‘operational issues’.

BE Broadband is to be relaunched as the face of Sky’s Fibre Pro Unlimited package, with special options for pro users and gamers, as well as expert customer support teams.

Image: jayfreshuk/Flickr

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *