I get my broadband (if you can call it that.. 3mb (on a good day), 2miles from the city centre ffs!) from BT. I didn’t want to but Virgin Media don’t cover my street, and the local BT exchange is over 2km away, for some reason, making every ADSL provider as crap as each other for me.
With my package from BT (one of the 5 billion different packages they do, which change every 6 months or so, as part of their ongoing complexity pledge), I get:
- Free evenings and weekend calls (which I don’t use);
- Fined if I don’t make a minimum number of calls every month (I’ve been fined a couple of times);
- Some sort of inclusive VoIP tie-in (given I don’t use the actual calls, I’m far too lazy to bother looking at what VoIP calling entails);
- Ability to use other free wifi at BT Openzone and BT Fon access points (I have never managed to get Fon to work, and O2 include free wifi with my mobile anyway). However, to use Fon, you have to allow other BT Broadband customers to use your router to get online (which is how Fon offers it for free), and I’ve got a shit enough speed as it is, without letting other people piggy-back off my connection; and
- BT Yahoo Webmail.
I don’t use the Yahoo webmail, obviously. Who uses Yahoo mail? It’s 2011 for heaven’s sake. Surely the only people using Yahoo mail are people who set it up 10 years ago and can’t be bothered to change it.
Why would I want another email address to bother checking? What if/when I change providers? Who wants the hassle of changing their address everywhere?
I tried not to have the email address/account, but you have to have a BT email address apparently. A couple of days ago I got this email: