UK email woes: BT Internet & Email

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Frode Hegland <frode () hyperwords net>
Date: February 26, 2008 10:57:34 AM EST
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: UK email woes: BT Internet & Email


Dave,
so we have moved into new offices right in the middle of Soho in London.

It's taken a month for the phone lines to get working, and finally  
today, internet access was enabled!

So jubilations all around and not so interesting for IP.

However, after loading a few news pages at impressive speed I went to  
send email. It just wouldn't send. i looked at settings, and all that  
fun stuff.

So I called BT.

The very nice support guy told me that since I was not using a BT  
email domain they would have to manually add me to be allowed to send  
or receive email.

I asked why and he talked about security, network load (YouTube is of  
course un-restricted and I could watch live video all day long), spam  
and so on.

I asked him what would happen if a client came to my office and needed  
to send or receive emails, would that person have to get their domain  
listed with BT as well? Yes.

What about all the Wifi hotspots where we can email, why is this  
restricted? He didn't know. How about throttling the amount of  
messages in a given time? No idea.

Then when I said OK, go ahead, the supervisor, now on the line,  
couldn't find a whois with my details. I suggested going to Network  
Solutions but that one is blocked for them. Finally he found one he  
could use and added it.

I then tried to find out from the supervisor what would happen to a  
visitor in my office with their own laptop, would they not be able to  
send email without calling BT to confirm their ownership of their  
domain name (picture that with a client from IBM say). He said yes.

What a crock. Is this what IP'ers are used to?

And one more thing. I cannot use my SMTP server, so every time I come  
into the office I need to go to my settings and change my email  
settings. No SSL, no authentication. They get 'security', I get none.

I have read a lot of back and forth on IP about tackling SPAM and  
usage of bandwidth. But this is just very restricting.

Or am I wrong and this is just the new reality of sending emails from  
an office?


Frode Hegland
The Hyperwords Company
www.hyperwords.net

richly interactive text





-------------------------------------------
Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now
RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com