If you get a letter from a business organisation that you’re a customer of advising that you are getting an “upgrade” that you haven’t asked for, you know that it’s going to be bad news, particularly if it’s accompanied by the word “exciting.”

Last year Vodafone announced with very short notice that it was abandoning its e-mail servers and telling people to go elsewhere — not to their direct NZ competition of course, but to Google or Microsoft.

They promised customers that e-mails sent to the old addresses would be automatically forwarded to your new Google or Microsoft one.  But that hasn’t been happening; with us it’s been about 1 in 6 by our estimates: the rest have disappeared into Vodafone’s black hole.

Soon it’s going to be an abandonment of the copper wire telephone network — this has already been happening in Wellington.

Basically, the phone jacks you have won’t work any more and you’ll need to plug your landline phone into the back of your Wifi modem; but that may not be suitable or just may not work, from what we’ve seen.  In this case Vodafone will send you a new digital cordless phone pair which will work. You’ll also need a new set-up for things like voicemail; your old saved messages won’t be there any more, so they’ll send you a CD or USB stick containing ones you particularly want to keep.

Most annoyingly of all, if you have a monitored security system, you need to get a new cellular-based system independent of the broadband installed which will cost about $700.

If the power goes off, will your phone still ring? No.  You’ll need to rely on your cellphone.

Questions and problems can be directed to a help call centre, but the call answering people sound to be based in the Philipines — good luck with that.

Taking to experts in the industry, it seems that all this is simply a consequence of Vodafone not wanting to train new technical personnel in the copper wire system, and it’s cheaper to abandon it completely.  The same is probably true of their competitors.

Will your telco bill come down as a result of all this?  Haha.