BT Switch Millions of UK Customer Email Accounts to New BTMail Service

Customers of BT Retail’s fixed line broadband service have today been told that they will be moved to the operators new BTMail service (an email solution supplied by Critical Path) later this year, which will follow the imminent closure of their existing BTYahoo! portal this summer.

The move, which forms part of the operators plan to re-launch their bt.com website from June 2013 (here) and follows shortly after BT changed the terms of its Yahoo! Mail service so that they could delete inactive accounts (here), will result in customer Inboxes (including all of your folders) being moved to the new service. Your email address will stay the same but you might need to change the password.

Nick Wong, BT’s Director of Online (Consumer Division), said:

“The new BT.com has been developed to make things easier and more engaging for our customers. They will only have to log in to this single site for all their requirements.

The new BT.com will feature breaking and exclusive news and features from a dedicated team of journalists at the Press Association covering areas such as news, entertainment and lifestyle. With BTSport.com also launching in the summer, we’ll bring customers exclusive live sports action as well.

We will be switching customers’ email over to BT Mail, which will include the features and functions they expect from a modern email service. It will also feature in-built anti-virus and anti-spam solutions. We will be keeping our customers fully informed about what changes to expect and when they will be able to enjoy the new services.”

BT expects to contact all of its Yahoo! based customers over the coming months with more details. The operator further noted that its business email services would not be affected by the change.

Recently Yahoo!’s email platform has become notorious for being exploited by hackers, although that didn’t stop Sky Broadband adopting Yahoo! for its new email service (replacing their old Google based platform); a process that incidentally suffered quite a lot of problems (here).

Indeed mass email migrations are known to cause significant problems and very few ISPs experience a smooth transition, just ask Sky and TalkTalk about it. So don’t be surprised if BT’s migration to the new Critical Path based platform doesn’t go as smoothly as hoped.