KEY POINTS:
Telecom deserves some credit for crediting its Xtra customers to the tune of a week's free internet to try and make up for the disastrous transition to YahooXtra Bubble.
At a cost of up to $6 million in lost revenue for Telecom, the bean-counters won't be happy, but it's the first time I can remember compensation being paid on a mass scale for loss of service. That is of course since late last year, when Telecom unleashed its broadband plans and in the process gave numerous customers dial-up internet performance. It credited some customers who were affected with a month's free internet access.
Can Telecom salvage the reputation of Bubble? Probably, but it's going to take a while to get some pretty alienated customers to warm to it. I've had at least six emails from people who have shifted to free webmail providers as a result of the Xtramail disruptions. Still, time to move on and hope our largest internet provider has learnt from the whole sorry experience ...
Anyway, if Bubble didn't go to plan, there's a new reminder of how powerful having Yahoo as a partner can be. In the US and Canada, Yahoo has launched a free email-to-text message service. As with a regular text message, the text is limited to 150 characters, but it is free and can be accessed from within Yahoo's interface.
I like the idea of being able to bang out a quick message to a friend or colleague knowing that they'll get it instantly on their phone - I can see this becoming a really popular feature. There have been heaps of services like this already, but with Yahoo's customer base, it's likely to get mass adoption for the first time.
Meanwhile, Salon is asking whether the improvements to Yahoo Mail are enough to consider ditching Gmail. I swear by Gmail, so even free email to SMS messaging wouldn't sway me.
What about you? What webmail provider is the best? Do you see value in email-to-SMS messaging?
