BT ends free email for non-broadband customers

From September, people with a BT email address who don't have broadband will either have to pay or see their account closed down.

If you used to be a BT broadband customer and you have a BT or talk21 email address, you’ll either have to pay for the privilege of keeping your account or it will be closed from next month.

As of 1st September, BT is closing the email accounts of all former broadband customers unless they sign up for a new broadband contract or pay £1.60 a month for the BT Premium email service.

Customers have until 16th September to either pay up or switch to another email provider. This applies to both BT and BT Yahoo email customers.

End of the line for dial-up too

BT is also closing its dial-up, or narrowband, internet service as of Sunday (1st September). Customers will either need to switch to BT broadband, if it’s available in their area, or Plusnet’s narrowband service.

If dial-up customers switch to BT broadband they’ll be able to keep their email address. If they switch to Plusnet, they’ll either have to pay the £1.60 a month for BT Premium or lose their email address. At least either option will be cheaper than continuing to pay BT £17.25 a month for dial-up.

However, it’s up to those customers to switch. If they haven’t moved by Sunday, their service will simply stop.

BT has also been deactivating the email addresses of current broadband customers who haven’t used their email addresses for 90 days.

What to do if you’re affected

If you don’t want to pay BT for your email address then you need to find a new free service. There are the likes of Microsoft’s Outlook.com (formerly Hotmail), Google’s Gmail, Yahoo mail, Apple’s iCloud and GMX.

To move your old email over to your new address, you could attempt the long and laborious task of forwarding. Or several free email services allow you to move your mail and folders over automatically; for example, Google offers a Mail Fetcher for transferring to Gmail.

If you own your own web hosting package you could use any free email address that comes with this.

The danger of ISP email

These changes highlight the potential danger of using an Internet Service Provider (ISP) for your main email account. They can shift the goalposts or close services, whereas their advertising-funded competitors have, to this point anyway, continued to offer a free-to-all service.

Are you affected by this change? Do you think BT is right to close these accounts? Let us know in the Comments box below.

More on online

Dropbox vs Google Drive vs Microsoft SkyDrive: the cheapest cloud storage

The UK's worst broadband provider

Broadband providers that charge an exit fee, even if you're out of contract

The fastest broadband providers

Watch out for these HMRC tax refund scams