said by telcodad:So far, like NetFixer, I've been able to continue using my att.net address, even though it is now a Yahoo premium POP/SMTP account.
And I think that it is because Yahoo! is now the carrier for AT&T customer email, and all of the att.net, bellsouth.net, sbcglobal.net, etc email servers are simply proxy front ends for the att.yahoo.com email servers. In essence, your AT&T email has actually been Yahoo! email for quite some time even if you didn't explicitly use the att.yahoo.com (or sbcglobal.yahoo.com) email servers.
C:\>nslookup inbound.att.net
Server: dcs-srv.dcs-net
Address: 192.168.9.2
Non-authoritative answer:
Name: pop-att-new.mail.am0.yahoodns.net
Addresses: 98.139.213.175, 98.138.83.30
Aliases: inbound.att.net, pop-att.mail.yahoo.com
C:\>nslookup pop.att.yahoo.com
Server: dcs-srv.dcs-net
Address: 192.168.9.2
Non-authoritative answer:
Name: pop-sbc.mail.am0.yahoodns.net
Address: 98.139.213.176
Aliases: pop.att.yahoo.com, pop-sbc.mail.yahoo.com
C:\>nslookup pop.sbcglobal.yahoo.com
Server: dcs-srv.dcs-net
Address: 192.168.9.2
Non-authoritative answer:
Name: pop-sbc.mail.am0.yahoodns.net
Address: 98.139.213.176
Aliases: pop.sbcglobal.yahoo.com, pop-sbc.mail.yahoo.com
I suspect that the terms of the AT&T/Yahoo! partnership is that Yahoo! has complete control over the email, and that it does not cost AT&T anything at all for Yahoo! to continue to service closed AT&T accounts. If it did cost AT&T anything, I don't think AT&T would be quite so generous to former customers (I know that before the AT&T/Yahoo! partnership, you had to continue to pay for a dialup account to keep email accounts active if you terminated DSL service).
Whatever the motivation, the fact that AT&T has allowed me to keep using my old AT&T email accounts (I use them as front-end pseudo store and forward servers for my inhouse email servers) has saved me from having to pay for a store and forward service. My Comcast Business Class service is reliable, but an email server needs to be on-line 24/7 with near zero downtime, and no standard ISP service is really going to be able to deliver that level of reliability.
When AT&T shafted me last year by arbitrarily creating a rule that does not allow more than one DSL account per customer/address, I immediately terminated my remaining DSL account and POTS service (that I used for faxing) with them. I would have immediately ported my cell phone numbers to Sprint or Verizon except for a stiff ETF. Since I have not really had any problems with my AT&T Mobility service, I now may not terminate my AT&T Mobility service when the ETF expires, simply because AT&T has allowed me to continue to use my old AT&T email accounts.
Some good deeds actually do go unpunished. ;)