ISP BT Trials UK Email Platform Migration Away from Yahoo!
Customers of broadband ISP BT, specifically those who still make use of their Yahoo! (BTYahoo Mail) based email platform, look set to face another significant migration. Sources have informed ISPreview.co.uk that the provider intends to move away from the trouble prone Yahoo! once and for all, but they’ve kept it very hush hush.
At present BT’s email migration appears to form part of a limited trial, which was initially started toward the end of last year, before being stalled by some bugs (example). According to our sources that trial has now started up again and indeed several customers appear to confirm that some of their email accounts have recently been shifted to BT Mail.
After a little bit of digging we discovered that the partner company for this migration is Synchronoss. According to our sources, BT may have chosen to move away from Yahoo! due to becoming unhappy with the company’s recent data breaches, as well as some instability in their service reliability. BT may also launch some accompanying new mail apps too.
So far the provider has chosen not to make any formal announcement about this migration (except for emailing those affected), although historically major platform migrations have a tendency to throw up plenty of problems for those affected (especially when they occur on big providers like BT).
We did contact BT about this and they have confirmed that a closed email migration trial is being conducted, which as expected involves moving BT Yahoo! customers onto BT’s own email platform (echoes of a 2014 attempt to do something similar). However BT seemed unable to say whether or when the trial would be turned into a full migration, although our sources expect this to be soon.
In addition to the above, our sources have also said that BT plans to use the same email service for sibling ISP Plusnet because the latter is alleged to have some issues with scalability. At present we have no information on when the change for Plusnet will take place but we assume that BT will want to complete their migration first (the learning experience will be useful).
As a general rule we always advise our readers never to rely upon the email services provided by an ISP (i.e. it’s far better to sign-up with one of the many free email providers), not least because it can make it harder for you to switch broadband providers and you could also run the risk of losing access to your address.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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It’s not really very hush, hush! They emailed in December to give notice that disposable yahoo email addresses will stop working “from April 2020”.
I started migrating away from my disposable addresses last time they tried this but still have plenty of old ones left that are rarely used. I’d be more comfortable if I could find confirmation that the yahoo base name will be permanently disabled after the migration and not made available for reuse at some future date.
MJ says “As a general rule we always advise our readers never to rely upon the email services provided by an ISP” which is sound advice but fortunately at least for BT customers they currently still offer (at be it a high price) the option to have BT Premium Mail. So it does provide at least some continuity if you change ISP. Something others haven’t been good at.
More important is that we can migrate quickly and easily if we need to. Our email address is now the key to so many services, we may use (including our ID) many keeping general stuff from our more confidential ones for HMRC, banking etc. Then there is the the need for password/account recovery and often our bills/service references/documents are all on-line now. I lost 4 key email addresses on BT’s last migration and despite all my efforts/help desk promises I had to give up in the end.
We may choose to get our own domain and email from a hosting company or choose a large US corporation such as Google, Microsoft, Apple and hope their massive profits will keep their free email systems alive, but can you really trust any of them 5 years out, 10 years out?.
I know it is easier said than done but retain a list of accounts, passwords and any key services (so you can notify them) on each in an encrypted file. Set up misc accounts for general surfing/enquiries. Ensure account recovery etc are sent to a completely separate provider (in case your mobile goes awol too). Even if you use on-line email use a Email client on a PC to sync and act as your backup for the key account(s) periodically. In my view if you get any email saying we are going to do this and not to worry, act fast. You may not always get sufficient warning and in our bloated never cleansed 1Gb email accounts are some really important stuff these days.
Rather than keeping password information, banking info, etc, in an “encrypted file” stored in each of your e-mail accounts, I’d recommend using a password management service like LastPass.com (free – other services are available). The free version is aimed more towards desktop users though since access is via browser, it can be used on a mobile device to look up a password if you’ve misremembered it.
It checks and warns about the same password being used for multiple services, can store hundreds of username / password / notes combinations and I have used it for years. In the last couple of years it was bought by LogMeIn.com so now has the security of a big firm to keep it running.
I laughed when I read “our bloated never cleansed 1Gb email accounts are some really important stuff these days.”
The laughter was because I’ve just recently deleted 200,000 messages from a few of my ~15 GMail accounts. I must still have 40 GB of mail remaining, but plan to dedicate a few hours every week to deleting the oldest content from at least 10 accounts, to try to get rid of the older messages from mail lists, servers running cron jobs, security warnings, etc.
This has been goin on years! i worked on the campaign for BT helping transfer from yahoo to btmail back in 2014?
Never knew it stopped! see the part of article mentioning the 2014 attempt, it was a disaster!
The BT Yahoo login or BT Yahoo email login is the same. Therefore, it’s actually the process of identifying the ownership of your BT Yahoo Mail account.
https://mstwotoes.com/bt-yahoo-login-bt-yahoo-mail-bt-yahoo-email-login/
I was switched from BT Yahoo to BT Mail over two weeks ago. Over 70 of my Contact email addresses went missing. It took an email to the BT CEO to get this looked at but there is still no sign of my missing Contact email addresses coming back to my account.
I have never used BT Yahoo always BTinternet but since the first week in April 2020 I have not been able to view my emails keep getting do nt recognize log in details and I have been with BT for yearsI am now looking for a new providers this has gone on long enough as I can not get any help from BT as no one knows what to do so fed up with BT
I installed the BT Mail App this morning,my emails are still being sent to yahoo mail.
When can I expect all mail to be transferred to BT Mail?
I logged onto the new BT email this morning only to find that my contact groups are all empty and there is no way of editing them! I had around 20 contract groups with anything up to 100 email contacts in each group all this data has been lost in the migration from BT/Yahoo to BT. There was no prior contact from BT that this migration was taking place.How can I get this data back? T
New BT Mail is DREADFUL. It changed at 00:01 on 10/06, I do not have enough space to write out all the problems. It is slow, clunky, not recognised properly by my iphone & receiving emails is a nightmare. As an example, the tab tells me I have say, 2 new emails. Open the inbox, nothing there! Close & reopen the inbox multiple times & suddenly, the emails appear!! How can I run a business with hundreds of emails to deal with per day? Sorry, BT this is time to change.
Terrible new BT email service – not a single redeeming feature. Everything is mega slow, clunky, keeps freezing and is badly laid out. Dealing with attachments is now a tiresome, 4-step nightmare, for a process that used to be easy and slick. I assume no-one at BT actually uses their awful email. Sadly I’m lumbered with it for now, but will be looking for new providers soon. Avoid BT at all costs.