Industry

Trail of Tears

Lockergnome, via Jenny Levine, laments that AT&T Broadband Comcast customers' e-mail addresses are changing.

There is no good technical reason for eliminating a domain during a mass migration such as this. Instead, it will cause more problems by collapsing two namespaces into one.

This is a poorly thought out decision to emphasize the COMCAST brand over the ATTBI brand. Unless you've purchased your domain, or are using a third-party to redirect mail to your address du jour, the e-mail address ties you to the vendor. If the vendor changes the e-mail address, this is an excellent opportunity for them to lose customers, and for you to change providers. The only device more effective for customer retention is geography — and the lack of options.

Let's look at a counter-example. In November 2001, SBC purchased Prodigy. Almost immediately afterward, they announced an strategic partnership with Yahoo!. SBC, Prodigy and Yahoo! customers now have the option to upgrade to the SBC Yahoo! bundle of Y! services and SBC Internet access. Customers keep their e-mail addresses, and we arrange for the delivery of prodigy.net, flash.net, wans.net, snet.net, ameritech.net, pacbell.net, nvbell.net, swbell.net, and sbcglobal.net addresses to the appropriate mailbox.

If Comcast needs assistance with integrating the attbi.com domain, I have a few friends who can help.

3:05:42 PM # Google It!
categories: Industry