MTS E-mail Services Changing

So...apparently MTS has sold-out to Bill Gates.
It would seem they no longer will support their e-mail system and are encouraging all their users to signup for Windows Live and move their e-mail accounts there.

Personally...I HATE Windows Live...I've used it, and find it intrusive and limited. The only thing that's kept me from switching to SHAW has been the PITA of changing all my e-mail accounts over. Looks like MTS has given me a reason to switch.

Here's the e-mail I received from MTS today about the change:

MTS is pleased to announce Microsoft's Windows Live as our preferred email service provider. To avoid interruption in your email service, please take a few minutes to make the move now and sign up for email service with Windows Live using your current MTS email address.

Access our step-by-step instructions and wizard at www.mts.ca/movemyemail (either click on the link or type the address into your web browser).

Please move
your mailbox listed below:

Mailbox:
Move your email account now to enjoy the benefits of Windows Live.

S. Kurtas
Vice President Marketing
MTS Allstream Inc.

I am with Shaw and happy that I switched from MTS to Shaw. MTS pissed me off royally in 2005 so I canceled everything to do with them and switched. I have had great service with Shaw, they are always there to help when and if we have a problem with phone, cable or internet.

What if you do nothing? How long before mail going to @mts.net is problematic? I've had that address for years and dread establishing a new identity with contacts.

MTS has a way of pissing people off eh?

I have Outlook. It integrates very nicely with Windows Live giving me the best of both worlds: Outlook at home and work. Windows Live on the net.

It integrates my contacts and calendar as well.

Why the hate on for Windows Live AA???

Jondo wrote:What if you do nothing? How long before mail going to @mts.net is problematic? I've had that address for years and dread establishing a new identity with contacts.

Will you lose your eMAIL address? Somehow I don't think you will...

Transition takes 5 minutes, it takes all messages from your MTS webmail account and puts them in the Live account.

Your email address will not change.
Your coontacts will be imported.
Your sent message, junk messages, deleted messages, saved messages etc that were all in webmail, will be ported over.

I have not done any changes to my Thunderbird settings yet, but I assume that will be simple to.

Only real change is instead of going to webmail.mts.net you now go to live.mymts.net.

On the plus side, you have "ever growing" storage space.
The old MTS webmail was archaic, but functional. The Live webmail is way more modern and optionable. I am not pro Microsoft anything, but in this case, it is an upgrade, and I don;t hate it as much as I expected to. Mind you, I do not use my MTS email much, so it is not much of a change for me.

I just have a problem with MS in general.

And I don't use webmail anyway...I like being able to do e-mails/calendar/etc. "offline" and then go online when I need to send/receive.

And I don't have any contacts in my webmail account anyway...and don't want all my personal contact information stored online.

I have MTS and have not received this e-mail.

I also got it and am unsure of what to do actually.

What will happen if we don't respond?

I expect at some point they'll arbitrarily move you.

ahhh.

It just occurred to me that Outlook does not come with Microsoft 7. I think Windows Live will be the new Microsoft standard... Can anyone confirm this?

Super annoying trying to get Windows Live to work with Vista Mail, apparently Vista Mail does not support http access of Windows Live even though MTS has very nice step by step instructions on how to do so. It does not work. The only way I could get it to work was to install the Windows Live client that I use on my Windows 7 machine. Other than that I haven't had any issues with the switch.

What I do have issues with is MTS continually reducing/removing services and charging me the same amount on my monthly bill. They removed newsgroup access back in October with very little notice. If I didn't occasionally use it I would have never known. Then in December, with almost NO announcement at all they started instituting bandwidth caps (like Shaw) even though they still advertise their service as "unlimited internet". In fact unless you click on the link for comparing internet service which brings up a .pdf you would never know that there is now a 60GB/month cap in place, going all the way up to a whopping (not) 150GB/month with their Lightning Bolt plan which is $85/month and only available to MTS TV customers. Now they offload their email servers to a 3rd party (which is probably another cost cutting measure on their part), and still no saving passed to customers.

The 60GB/month cap is a joke and was the main reason I stuck with MTS in the past rather than going to Shaw and their crappy caps. Now that they are both basically the same I see no reason not to shop back and forth for better rates. Between 3 PC's, and 2 online game consoles (downloading games, demo's, streaming video) 60GB monthly is barely adequate only if one is carefull of monitoring their usage.

It's sad with all the new streaming content available (services like Youtube HD, Steam, Xbox Live for games and movies, Itunes, Apple TV, Hulu in the US) that we have ISP's going back towards the dial up days in service. Rather than upgrade their infrastructure during the last 10 years they have done nothing, and now that they are running out of bandwidth they blame the consumer.

I just talked to my Dad, who works for MTS. He said that nobody has to use windows live and you can still use outlook if you want. You will just have to make a couple changes to your out going and incoming mail servers and change them to the new windows live address rather than the old mts pop3 address.

He said it's getting too expensive for ISP's to manage there own mail servers these days. So now Microsoft will manage the mail server. He also said the Shaw will be doing the same thing, except there are going with Yahoo.

What ever, I use Yahoo mail and Gmail as my main mail accounts. My shaw mail account i never use.

Grumpyrom, I also asked about the 60GB cap. He says that they are kicking around the idea but have yet to implement it. He says there is currently no penalty for going over the cap and if it does get implemented it wouldn't be until at least a year from now.

He also says that MTS has been doing massive upgrades to the infrastructure.

I have a Shaw account as well that I never use. I also have a Yahoo account that is never used.

I've basically two eMAIL addresses. A gmail address and an MSN address. The gmail address is used whenever I don't trust whom I'm giving that address to. The MSN address is used wherever I implicitly trust the party. It works very well for me since I get dozens of spam daily in gmail and almost none in MSN.

I have no cap issues as I rarely download large files.

I use my shaw email exclusively, I use hotmail for facebook, myspace etc.

Bartron wrote:Grumpyrom, I also asked about the 60GB cap. He says that they are kicking around the idea but have yet to implement it. He says there is currently no penalty for going over the cap and if it does get implemented it wouldn't be until at least a year from now.

He also says that MTS has been doing massive upgrades to the infrastructure.

Thanks for the inside tip....I wasn't too happy to see it on the website. For people who actually use a lot of the streaming media that is now available 60GB is ridiculously low. You can easily go over that just by downloading Xbox demo's as most are 1-3GB each. Add in some Itunes purchase, a few Youtube HD videos and multiply by 2 or 3 users on your home network and you easily run out of bandwidth.

I hope they seriously reconsider the limits as multiple computer households are becoming the norm rather than the exception, and we are only begining to see some of the possibilities that exist in the US and elsewhere. For instance my wife's grandparent have a MTS internet for the sole reason of accessing ethnic programming via an IPTV box connected to their router. I'm positive they use over 60GB/month as video streaming uses huge bandwidth amounts. Under the new caps they would lose the only option they have for this service.

Hopefully they look at upgrading equipment rather than caps.

speaking of services changing

awhile back I got an email.. Shaw saying.. hey bud give us a call we need to upgrade your modem. Thing of it is I went with the PURCHASE your modem plan and recieve a $5 discount in perputity. So I ignored the email. Yesterday I get a package in the mail. New modem in it and a letter DEMANDING I switch within 30 days.

WTF?

Ya know....I never had this problem with my IBM Selectic and S-mail.

AGEsAces wrote:So...apparently MTS has sold-out to Bill Gates.
It would seem they no longer will support their e-mail system and are encouraging all their users to signup for Windows Live and move their e-mail accounts there.

Personally...I HATE Windows Live...I've used it, and find it intrusive and limited. The only thing that's kept me from switching to SHAW has been the PITA of changing all my e-mail accounts over. Looks like MTS has given me a reason to switch.

Here's the e-mail I received from MTS today about the change:

MTS is pleased to announce Microsoft's Windows Live as our preferred email service provider. To avoid interruption in your email service, please take a few minutes to make the move now and sign up for email service with Windows Live using your current MTS email address.

Access our step-by-step instructions and wizard at www.mts.ca/movemyemail (either click on the link or type the address into your web browser).

Please move
your mailbox listed below:

Mailbox:
Move your email account now to enjoy the benefits of Windows Live.

S. Kurtas
Vice President Marketing
MTS Allstream Inc.

Is there an extra cost or savings for using this "feature"?

Can't be. That would clearly be illegal.

I'm wondering if they are even able to do this legally. This is a change to our agreement and, as such, would require our agreement to change with consent, or the agreement would be deemed cancelled.

That's my take anyway.

My guess is they have a weasel clause in their contract. If not they are likely prepared to carry the few resistors for the short while they'd have to or fight them in court if someone wanted to go there...