Rumours about Bigpond email services closing down in 2024 have been circulating for years.
Even Telstra store employees are urging Bigpond customers to move emails to Outlook.com or Gmail ASAP
Many people out there have been using their @bigpond.com or @bigpond.net.au email addresses for 30 years. As well as day-to-day emails, they have hundreds or thousands of emails in folders with 30 years of history and in many cases, financial records.
Imagine losing access to this information or being unable to access banking or medical websites because you cannot recover your password to that bigpond email address?
Agreed, it does not bear thinking about. But think about it you must, as Telstra are making it very clear that just like TPG they no longer want to be in the business of providing email services.
It used to be that on signing up for a TELSTRA phone or internet service you would be automatically given a @bigpond or @telstra email address. Not anymore and for those accounts you cannot use their email domains to login to webmail or mytelstra accounts.
We do NOT recommend transferring Bigpond e-mails to Gmail
Outlook.com (Microsoft) is preferable to Gmail (Google) as they do not use your data for marketing purposes as Google do.
We advice customers to setup an Outlook.com (the old hotmail) as a replacement free email service. You get 15GB free email and if you have a 365 subscription that goes up to 50GB of storage
How to transfer Emails from Bigpond to an Outlook.com address
- Setup an outlook.com account
- Add the new account to Outlook 365 App (Windows or Mac Desktop)
- Use the Outlook App to export your Bigpond emails and folders to a .pst file
- User Outlook App to import the Bigpond emails and folders (from .pst file)
- Access the Telstra account and setup an email redirection to the new outlook.com address
There is a feature in the Bigpond/Telstra webmail where you can forward email to another account, so simply redirect it to the Outlook.com account and start using that. People will get used to replying to that and Telstra are not going to turn that email address off in the short term (else you cannot login and pay for your account) and they need a means of allowing account holders to recover their passwords.
If you use Telstra for your ISP (Internet service provider), we suggest you change that also. There are many Australian owned ISP’s with similar pricing AND Australian call-centres with far superior customer service. Suggestions for alternative NBN providers are AussieBroadband, for fixed-wireless, Pentanet or Node-One and in rural areas, Starlink.
However, Telstra still provide the best overall mobile phone coverage anywhere in Australia, so we suggest keeping your Telstra mobile phone service. However, you can save money by purchasing the Telstra service via JB HiFi rather than directly from Telstra themselves.
Secure your new Outlook.com account with MFA
How to secure your Microsoft Account using MFA (Multifactor Authentication)
If you are a business using a Telstra or Bigpond account. Time to get off it and setup your own domain. We can help you there also.
How to setup a Bigpond email in Microsoft Outlook 365 App
Bigpond “No Password” Error when setting up email on iPhone or iPad
Business Email Options
If you need help migrating your emails and folders, addresses etc from Bigpond or Telstra to Outlook.com we can also help there. Just drop us a line with your details and we will send you a quote.
Further Help
Does your business send email to Gmail or Yahoo accounts?
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