Don't know where you got your info about sky broadband, cos when my 12 month contract ends in October I'm off......... possibly to talk talk or back to ever faithful bt. Never had so many problems logging onto my e mail account as I've had with them. Been with Ntl, no problems, and if there was one was fixed no bother by a phone call. moved to the countryside and went with virgin, not too bad, back to ever dependable bt (altho the priciest) never a problem, changed to sky last October, never again, nothing but problems. In the countryside you don't get the cheap deal you can be offered in Glasgow for example. Out here we're limited to a bt line so pay them each month as well as a basic package to sky and then we also took their phone package. Not really value for money out in the sticks, cos they justify why you can't have the £26 package out here, and we're not really that far from the exchange. Anyway wouldn't recommend them to anyone after our experience. Sometimes takes me 20-30 mins just to get into my sky e mails, what's the justification for that? Seems the weather causes them problems, well it never causes bt those kind of problems. Mind you it's the same when my husband wants to watch Celtic on his Setanta thru sky, depends on the weather, com on!!!!!!!!!!! Anyway had to have my say for what it's worth.

Question (not defending Sky as this applies to any ISP): If email is so important, why leave it to your ISP to provide it?

Google's mail service (gmail) is very good (although I have privacy concerns so no really personal stuff) and it's free, accessable anywhere and offers great spam/virus filtering.

For total control, buy your own domain name and a bit of cheap hosting - about £10/15 a year - and you have complete control over all your mail that is independent of any service provider. You can change your isp daily and keep the domain name.