SBC Transitioning to AT&T's Email Infrastructure

By Dan Deneweth
Director of Product Management, Delivery Assurance Solutions

Since the merger of SBC and AT&T late last year, SBC has been busy making changes to their email infrastructure. Previously a member of the Yahoo's email network, SBC has been transitioning its enterprise email accounts to the AT&T infrastructure (consumer email will stay with Yahoo).

It's not clear how long this transition will take to complete, but we are already seeing significant changes in how email into some SBC accounts is being handled. For example, delivery of email campaigns is now subject to AT&T rules rather than Yahoo's. Previously, if a campaign was bulked at Yahoo, it would also be bulked at SBC. This is no longer the case for accounts that have been transitioned to the new infrastructure. You could now see campaigns being bulked at Yahoo and not SBC (or vice versa).

Overall, we have not noticed any significant impacts on deliverability to SBC accounts. However, there are a few notable differences to keep in mind regarding the new infrastructure. As part of AT&T, SBC will no longer be using Yahoo's whitelisting service. Additionally, SBC service issues will now be directed to AT&T rather than Yahoo.

Keeping an eye on the future...SBC is now in the process of acquiring BellSouth. While still months away, we would expect BellSouth email accounts to eventually follow suit and join the AT&T network infrastructure.