The current system of using the name of the corporation that you buy internet access from as your email address doesn’t work. Over 200,000 people in New England have had to change their addresses from [email protected] to [email protected] to [email protected] in the last year. And if an existing Comcast customer already has [email protected], they’re going to have to change their user name as well.
As David Weinberg says, “This is the clearest example I’ve seen of the confluence of the marketing and cattle farmer’s sense of ‘branding.'”
This system makes some sense when you’re talking about the address where you do your employer’s business. But there is no excuse any longer for yoking your digital identity to that of your access provider. Get your own domain. This will also make it easier to change access providers without notifying everyone in your address book.
At least that’ll work until more access companies limit our access to POP and SMTP.