My parents are looking to cut costs living off the pension. My old man has a bigpond email which is tied to every random digital login platform he has and so he wants to retain it, he's 80+ and won't manage the change if he has to adopt a new email. The catch is that he wants to ditch his Telstra NBN + landline phone plan because it costs too much. His mobile is with Optus and I'm thinking an annual Aldi mobile plan with data banking might be a thrifty way of reducing costs. He still wants to watch Netflix on his telly though so I need an ISP. Does anyone have any ideas on a budget way to keep bigpond email on the cheap but not use Telstra for mobile or ISP?
Keeping Bigpond Email on a Budget
brettule on 29/11/2022 - 16:51
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Just close the account, you will have the email until you die for free. I still haven't got a bill on my bigpond email after 4 years leaving Telstra.
Telstra inherited the legendary bureaucracy and red tape from its government owned structure and probably never get out of it. I just got their 6 month 250mbs give away due to that.
I've got no insight to what Telstra is planning on doing in regards to long-term use of email services but I know a lot of mid-size ISPs in Australia if they're still offering emails starting to phase it out.
I wouldn't be surprised if in the next few years we'll see larger companies start doing the same.
To put this in perspective Telstra does charge $79 a year you can get pretty decent email hosting and domain name for a lot less.
And in my opinion it's going to be a lot easier to take the time to start phasing it out now instead of been given a hard cut off deadline which may happen in the future.
Additionally last year over Christmas, the iiNet/Westnet data centre here in W.A. had a meltdown due to high temperature taking email services offline into the new year it took them into the later half early part of January February to get back up and running full speed.
The simple factors ISPs don't consider email service a critical infrastructure or worth the capital expense I would believe these days and as there hardware ages I think we're going to see a lot of it disappear rather than spend the capital expense to extend its life when most customers have moved on.
ISP emails gone from being a default feature you get immediately to something you have to take the conscious effort to set up.
Not sure how I managed it, but I’ve had a free bigpond account for about 14 years. Before that I was a customer & had Fox TV/ADSL supplied by them.
Somehow I ended up with a legacy account that they continue to service. I seem to remember getting something from them explaining that they’d continue to support the email.
Might be worth checking to see if your Dad has the same arrangementWell, that would be perfect!
Same. Been using my bigpond emails for about 15 years at least. Have not been a Telstra customer for around 12 years.
Never paid for mine, and i have used it for years. By the way @telstra.com is also an alias that works with bigpond email addresses.
Can I keep a Telstra email address after closing my Telstra account?
It’s free to keep for the first 12 months after you cease to be a Telstra customer. After that, it’s $79 a year.
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