Here's a blast from the past: Xtra, or more specifically what's left of the Telecom-era brand, which is the email service. A surprising number of people still have an xtra.co.nz suffixed email address, if my inbox is anything to go by. I'm hoping Spark can confirm the number, but the last one I saw points to Xtra having somewhere north of 300,000 active users.
From May 16, Spark customers who used to get Xtra email for free will be asked to stump up with $5.95 including GST a month. Non-Xtra customers will be charged $9.95 a month.
I spotted this by accident over at the excellent Geekzone forum. Here's the thread with some good discussion around the change. Apparently Xtra does not recycle email addresses that have been dormant for two years, as of 2023, which is good as it could otherwise lead to phishing attacks.
Although nobody wants or needs yet another subscription charge, Xtra does have a decent 1 terabyte storage limit. What's more, this is per mail box although Spark decided to limit the number per account to five. Existing users with more mailboxes are allowed to keep them, although new ones can't be created.
Free Google Gmail starts at 15 gigabytes (although it grows a little as you use it), and Fastmail for example has a fairly small 100 GB per user limit. As for Microsoft/Outlook, fill your boots with complicated pricing plans here. Users who subscribe to Apple's iCloud+ which comes with 2 TB of storage can create a personal domain with email service there, or move an existing one to it.
Another change is that Xtra email which is run by Wellington's SMX, a company that was acquired by global IT services giant Crayon, headquartered in Oslo, Norway, will be served from Microsoft's Azure cloud in Australia.
Will you stay with Xtra, sorry Spark, and pay for the service, or move your messages and contacts to another provider? Let us know in the comments. Lots of small businesses still have Xtra email, but Spark said it's for personal use only. The telco is encouraging businesses to move to Microsoft 365 instead.
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