Email addresses linked to the early days of the digital revolution in Canberra are set to be cancelled, in a move that could affect up to 13,000 inboxes.
Grapevine, a joint venture between ActewAGL and TransACT, was established in 2005 and was the first service many Canberra customers used to access the internet.
The internet service provider was taken over by TransACT, which was then sold to iiNet in 2011 for $60 million.
Now iiNet has told customers who still hold email accounts on old Grapevine domain names their inboxes would be closed from May 31.
"Once closed, you will no longer be able to send or receive emails using your mailbox, email forwarding to or from another email address will stop, you won't be able to access any existing emails stored on the mail server and any messages sent to your email will bounce back to the sender as undeliverable," customers were told.
Users with @grapevine.com.au, @grapevine.net.au and @homemail.com.au email addresses are understood to be affected.
The company said the decision was not related to the cost of maintaining the email addresses, but said the platform was no longer supported.
Richard Webb said he had used a Grapevine-linked email address for more than 18 years.
"It is literally impossible to identify before the end of May the many hundreds of places that I have used my email address, and to change my account details. In many cases I will be unable to change an email address on an account after the end of May because the system concerned will seek confirmation of the attempted change from my old email address," Mr Webb wrote to iiNet customer support.
"This massive disruption to my life will also be writ large across thousands of other people in Canberra."
There were 23,000 active Grapevine email accounts a decade ago, when a fault meant thousands of customers were unable to access their inboxes. iiNet believes 13,000 accounts could be affected by the closure but was unable to confirm whether all those were currently active.
iiNet has recommended affected customers migrate their email addresses to a web-based service, like Google-operated Gmail.
The company has also promised no contract break fees or modem payout fees would apply to customers who choose to cancel their iiNet broadband service as a result of the decision to cancel Grapevine email accounts.
A spokesman for TPG Telecom, which owns iiNet, said the Grapevine email system had reached the end of its life and the company began notifying customers this week to give them time to migrate to other services.
"We appreciate the closure of this legacy email system may be disappointing for some customers and have provided detailed information on our iiNet website to assist with the closure process," the spokesman said.
We've made it a whole lot easier for you to have your say. Our new comment platform requires only one log-in to access articles and to join the discussion on The Canberra Times website. Find out how to register so you can enjoy civil, friendly and engaging discussions. See our moderation policy here.
