New broadband and mobile customers of UK ISP BT will, from the end of this month, no longer be able to benefit from the operator’s included Email and online Cloud storage features. The good news is that existing customers will be unaffected, at least for now.

The change flows from BT’s announcement in April (here), which revealed that, over time, they intend to turn EE into the “flagship brand for our consumer customers” (i.e. converged broadband and mobile plans). As part of that, the operator has been busy reviewing what this means for their products and services.

Admittedly, we’re surprised that BT’s Email platform has lasted this long, since these days very few broadband ISPs either advertise or even include it alongside their packages – partly because Freemail services (Hotmail, Gmail etc.) have reduced their importance, and they’re often seen as more trouble than they’re worth to maintain. Similarly, there’s a fair bit of choice to be found when it comes to Cloud storage (Mega, MediaFire, Dropbox etc.), although not all of them provide a free option.

Read the full story here.