Email provider for ISPs and Carriers, a challenge for the use and protection of email. New email platform for 180,000 Altibox customers

Email services are often offered by telecoms operators and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) as part of their Internet access.

The ability to deliver speed and bandwidth has always been a key success factor for ISPs. In particular, an ISP must be able to offer a variety of speeds and bandwidths to meet the different needs of home users.

However, speed is not the only relevant criterion. As the Internet became more widespread and technical capacity increased, providers quickly began to offer additional services such as website hosting, domain registration and email services.

E-mail and its use in numbers:

Email is still a widely used communication tool for businesses and individuals around the world. In organisations, email forms the basis of most 'official' communications and marketing campaigns. For individuals, the use of email is necessary for any form of online presence, whether it is logging into social media sites, shopping online, accessing government services or any other form of online communication.

The numbers speak for themselves:

• Today, there are more than 4.2 billion email users worldwide. This number is expected to grow to more than 4.7 billion by the end of 2026.
• Revenue from all segments of the email market is expected to grow to more than $105.5 billion by the end of 2026, a compound annual growth rate of 14 percent. This revenue growth will be driven primarily by the migration from on-premises email mailboxes to cloud-based email mailboxes.

Cloud-based email services continue to experience strong growth, leading organisations to move away from on-premises email server solutions. Not only has the functional divide between on-premises and cloud email solutions disappeared, but in most cases, cloud email offerings promise more advanced functionality than on-premises email solutions. The benefits of the cloud for email and collaboration are clear to all organisations, and more and more organisations of all sizes and industries are adopting cloud services. As a result, ISPs and BtoC telcos are also affected by this trend.

Why is it that e-mail services provided by ISPs (Internet Service Providers) often have a bad reputation in the B2C sector?

Firstly, it costs money to provide a secure email service, due to the cost of storage on the email server and technical maintenance. There is also the need to deal with customer support requests, which requires the employment of staff to deal with these requests. An email address is a cost centre for ISPs with no real marketing revenue to offset it. As a result, some opt for cheaper email solutions, compromising the security of their users.

The ISP usually provides a free email address, the cost of which is included in the Internet access contract. ISPs therefore tend to maximise their revenues by offering the cheapest possible email solutions, which inevitably come with features and services that do not meet their customers' expectations.

This can be illustrated as follows:

• Block retrieval from an email client
• Insufficient handling of the issue of unsolicited e-mail (spam)
• Providing mailboxes which are too small
• Overly restrictive or completely out-of-control deliverability of outbound email
• First level support sometimes limited to FAQs or forums

This is not the case for the ISPs that have chosen to work with Alinto.

Alinto offers its partners secure premium email solutions with the latest generation of virus and spam filters, monitoring and knowledge about the transport and deliverability of emails. In addition to the technological components, Alinto offers a customer service that focuses on user satisfaction.

In short, email security for carriers and ISPs is our core business.

Read more about our Altibox success story:

• 180,000 mailboxes on one email platform
• Turnkey solution that includes a premium security service to protect against spam and other threats
• Successful migration of 180 terabytes of data

Altibox is a unified brand for broadband, IPTV and VoIP services sold in Norway and Denmark. With more than 750,000 fibre optic connections, Altibox is one of the leading providers of Internet access and fixed line services in Norway.

Altibox also provides email service to its customers. In 2022, the company decided to move to a new email solution. As email security is an important issue for operators and ISPs, Altibox chose alinto's BtoC mail services and security solutions.

In this paper, Thomas Lunde, Head of Hybrid Cloud Services, and Marius Ekeland, Product Manager for Security and Email at Altibox, report on their collaboration with Alinto.