Re: VM transferring email services to Junara
 

Thanks, WildBill, I ‘ll try that.

Re: VM transferring email services to Junara
 

You know, I do vaguely remember hearing that there was some kind of legal shenanigans going on at the time and technically Telewest (the smaller company) actually bought NTL. Something to do with broadcast rights, although the merged company retained the NTL branding.

Possibly an urban myth.

Re: VM transferring email services to Junara
 

I find it hard to believe that any business would use legal shenanigans during a buy out or sell off . . honestly :D

Re: VM transferring email services to Junara
 

It's actually true.

It was due to Telewest (Flextech) owning half of UKTV, with BBC Worldwide owning the other half.

If Telewest was bought by another company the BBC could trigger a "change of control" clause in the UKTV agreement forcing Telewest to sell their share in UKTV.

To prevent that happening, the deal was structured so Telewest acquired NTL.

https://www.digitalspy.com/tech/a252...of-uktv-stake/

Re: VM transferring email services to Junara
 

The October 2005 agreement envisaged NTL acquiring Telewest with Telewest shareholders to receive cash plus shares in the enlarged NTL. However Telewest owned TV channel Flextech which, with the BBC set up UKTV as a 50/50 joint venture to exploit the BBC's archives on multichannel TV through a range of commercial services, starting with UK Gold and three new launches: UK Style, UK Arena and UK Horizons.

If Telewest or Flextech were taken over or experienced a change in ultimate ownership, BBC Worldwide, the corporation's commercial arm, would be entitled to buy Telewest's 50% of UKTV. But NTL was so keen to hang on to UKTV that it changed the terms of the merger to become a takeover by Telewest - meaning it was actually a reverse takeover of NTL by Telewest with NTL’s shareholders and Telewest's shareholders ending up owning approximately 75% and 25% respectively of the combined corporate entity. Immediately after the reverse takeover completed on 3 March 2006, the legal parent company was NTL Incorporated (formerly Telewest Global, Inc., which changed its name to NTL Incorporated as part of the transaction) but the combined business was branded/referred to publicly as “ntl:Telewest” for the period before the Virgin Media rebrand.

So, in effect NTL did buy Telewest but did it in a somewhat convoluted way.

Re: VM transferring email services to Junara
 

I've been using an ntlworld email for decades.
Frankly I think it's appalling they are removing the service for all customers. They should have stopped it being part of the service for new customers retained it for active accounts taking other services (Broadband etc) and use the Junara option for those who have want to continue using the email but have or are moving to other suppliers for Broadband, TV and phone.
I'm not prepared to pay £60py to Junara (after the free period) so I'll have to update a lot of online accounts which I started today and found that a very large number of them have no provision to do this as they use the email as the primary ID as well as contact info. For these orgs I will have to create a new account and keep the old one to retain access to the details of previous orders etc. One such account is an annual travel insurance policy with 235 days to run so I'll have no choice but to use the Junara free period.
It is an incredible inconvenience (hours of work!!)

Re: VM transferring email services to Junara
 

TBH, I have found pretty much all online accounts will allow you to change email, either within the online system, or by contacting their support.

Re: VM transferring email services to Junara
 

I think the fact they are migrating it to a paid provider that is what sucks.

I still also find it astounding that people did not see this as a possibility ever.

I always expected to lose the email address if I was to leave NTL at the time the email was chosen and I never expected to do over 30 years business with only a break from 1999 till NTL rolled out cable modems which of course will be when I got the email address so as soon as Microsoft bought Hotmail that became my main address.

Plus the more I spent time thinking about this since 1999 I have changed my main email addresses countless times from AOL to Hotmail and now Gmail and Outlook

Aols lasted a long time because I used the container service over a dial up from someone else switching from free provider to free provider . That went Screaming.net (owned by localtel and was bought by next on the list) worldonline lineone ukonline back to Aol then ntl for cable

Re: VM transferring email services to Junara
 

When I think back on the 'selling points' that attracted me to NTL, they've all now vanished (or are about to) into the cost cutting bin.

Times change, and I guess there's no profit being the big fish in a pool now full of piranha