North American Network Operators Group
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ISP support for Email (was Re: DDoS Question)

  • From: Sean Donelan
  • Date: Fri Sep 28 14:26:32 2007

On Fri, 28 Sep 2007, Martin Hannigan wrote: 
After researching the outsourced mail options, I found that the market
is not mature or flexible enough yet. For example, we need the hook
into automated systems, we need some level of control for front line
support,

AT&T, Verizon, BT and so on have outsourced most of their subscriber
email to other vendors (MSN and Yahoo) for years. I think they are
the poster-children for companies with big, unwieldy OSSes. Likewise Critical Path has made a decent business supporting white label e-mail for many ISPs around the world.

I've saw the duct tape from the inside and the outside.  It ain't
pretty, but they seem to make it work.

and we need assurances that the provider will comply with the
laws of where *the subscribing network* may be regulated. Not another
country. If we get a subpoena or surveillance request, we need to be
in the loop since we (and you all) are regulated.


Of course, you could outsource your legal support to trusted third
party vendors too :-)  For only a small fee, they will solve all
the problems.

Google was my best hope and it was too bad they barely responded. The
application suite for ISP's might have been ok if it were tuned up a
little, or had more information and a real person running the program.
They seem to have the right idea. Throw massive reasons at the
problem, build user base, generate ad revenue to pay for it, and sell
services to others i.e. anti-fraud and anti-phishing.

Why should ISPs still pay to support subscriber e-mail either inhouse
or outsourced, any more than paying to support USENET, Chat, FTP/HTTP Hosting, etc? Let subscribers choose whichever "free" or "fee-based" supplier, and wash your hands of both the support issues and the legal compliance issues.