I have spent about 1½ hours on a BT help call to determine:

1. those wanting to move away from BT will have their former BT email address supported for free for one month; this has been recently reduced from three months. After that, it will cost £1.60/month to continue to use it.

2. domestic emails are limited by Yahoo to 100 emails per day. The maximum number of recipients per email is 25 otherwise there is a risk that Yahoo will block greater activity because of the risk that a hacker has compromised your account. Initially I was told by a level 2 Yahoo spokeswoman that the maximum number was five recipients, and it was only when I challenged this that she investigated and came back with the higher number of 25.

I know that other providers are better than this. This may be why BT is planning to move away from Yahoo. However, this does not alter the fact that a phone call to their help desk can take an hour or more as one is passed from person to person, sitting in a queue listening to apologies. So I am planning to leave BT because of its poor provision, its costs and its hour-long phone calls.