Virgin Media Is Offloading Email to Atmail

Virgin Media O2 has announced that it is transferring the ongoing management of its consumer email service to Junara, a dedicated email provider owned by Atmail. The announcement comes via Alan Stott, Chief Operating Officer at Virgin Media O2, who framed the change as a way for the company to focus on its core business (broadband, mobile, landline, and TV) rather than continuing to run a consumer email platform it stopped offering to new customers back in 2022.

What's Changing

Affected customers are those with Virgin Media email addresses at any of four domains: virginmedia.com, blueyonder.co.uk, ntlworld.com, and virgin.net.

Those customers have three options:

1. Move their existing email service to Atmail's Junara, which will incur a fee.
2. Download their data and move to a provider of their choice.
3. Close their Virgin Media email account.

Timeline-wise, customers began to be contacted in phases starting in September, with at least 45 days from first communication to decide what to do. Virgin Media is also providing an additional 120-day recovery window for customers who miss the initial notices or need extra help. If no action is taken after that 165-day period, the email account is permanently deleted.

Why This Matters to Senders

Virgin Media is careful to describe this as a transfer, not a shutdown, but the practical reality is that not every existing user is going to move to Junara. Some won't want to pay for email they've been getting for free. Some are former customers who haven't used a Virgin Media service in years and won't bother to sign up for a new plan just to keep an old mailbox alive. Some will simply miss the notices. And some will decide it's finally time to abandon their old ntlworld.com address they've been meaning to migrate off for a decade.

That means senders should expect higher bounce rates at all four domains as accounts get shut down, and those bounces will likely ramp up in waves, following Virgin Media's phased customer communications.

If you've got subscribers at these domains and you care about keeping in touch with them, now is a good time to reach out and ask for updated contact information.

As accounts are closed, mail sent to those addresses will start bouncing. We all know that continuing to attempt delivery to now-dead addresses is not a path to deliverability success. Make sure you’re suppressing bouncing addresses properly.

Also note that with a new backend host for these mailboxes comes new and updated spam filtering. If you’re seeing blocking or other deliverability-related troubles when attempting to send to Virgin Media domains, note that Junara/Atmail will be the responsible party that you’ll need to reach out to.

Read the full transition announcement from Virgin Media O2 here.