very stupid question ..

[iheartdusty]

if I change my broadband provider from BT to (say) bethere

can I still keep my BT email address?

or is there any easy way to re-route emails to a new address?

and is there any general rule about whether I would have to pay for the address (if I don't have a BT broadband package) or will it just depend on BT's terms and conditions?

I know nothing at all about our current arrangements because it was all done by DH's employers, but now they are going to stop providing it. I can't see anything helpful on the BT website. I have lots of business & professional contacts who I doubt will manage to update their address books effectively if I change email address.

You can't keep having your BT email address, unless you get broadband from them (and even then, they might mangle it, tbh). If you think you might change broadband provider, having an independent email address (e.g. gmail) is better.

I was able to keep my AOL address...because AOL offer a free webmail account which we converted to.

ahhh..thanks very much. Bugger. I will have to consider paying BT myself then. I do have a googlemail address, but as I say, there are all too many contacts who can't be relied on to make the change.

You can keep your BT email address. You either need to pay £1.50 a month for BT Yahoo Premium Mail, or you can convert to a pay-as-you-go dail up customer. If you have a computer with a modem (remember those?) you just have to dial in once every three months to keep the account alive. If you forget, they send you a reminder after a while, and in practice I have kept an account with 4 @btinternet.com email addresses alive like this for about 5 years with only having to dial in about 10 times - total cost about 30p!

that sounds very promising! Thank you MrVibrating.