Telco email is waaaaaay over provisioned.

Telcos around the world have long offered consumer email services as a bundled benefit, but the market is now marked by massive over-provisioning, leading to wasted resources and missed opportunities for innovation. Drawing on our internal insights from 27 years in the white label email industry and external market data, lets dive into the how global operators are maintaining capacity for millions of dormant email accounts, why divesting these legacy services makes sense, and why the impact on customers is far less than many fear.

Let’s start with the numbers. Across regions and operators, the gap between provisioned mailboxes and actual active customers is staggering:

• • Example 1: In 2025 this telco reported a provisioned mailbox count of 3.2 million.  Upon auditing the service, the activity logs revealed about 1 million accounts had accessed the service in the past few months. That’s nearly a 70% decline or 2 million dormant accounts maintained for no reason.
  • Example 2: In 2024 this telco renewed 1.8 million email and anti-abuse software licences for their on-premises consumer email service.  After working through an audit and migrating them to Atmail cloud, only 350,000 email accounts required licensing representing a reduction of over 80%, reflecting the true active customer base.
  • Example 3: In 2023 this telco had over 3.1 provisioned email accounts. During the first audit this number dropped to 1.3 million and then digging deeper to around 600,000 that were in use.  A 77% decline.

The roots of over-provisioning lie in the early days of internet adoption, when email was bundled as part of internet plans to drive stickiness and perceived value. Operators provisioned mailboxes for every subscriber, often maintaining these accounts indefinitely, even after customers moved on or stopped using the service.

The rise of global platforms such as Gmail, Outlook.com, Yahoo and iCloud led millions to abandon telco-provided email for alternatives offering better integration and user experience. Internal Atmail data shows that less than 30% of provisioned telco email accounts are accessed monthly, and less than 10% are used as a primary address.

This bloat impacts more than just licensing costs. It means:

• • Higher anti-abuse spend (licensing for inactive accounts)
  • Excessive data centre and storage overheads for dormant mailboxes
  • Unnecessary support and maintenance for legacy systems
  • Increased risk of abandoned accounts exploited for spam or fraud

Given the shrinking relevance and clear data on usage, divesting consumer email services, by migrating them to specialist cloud providers or sunsetting them is increasingly attractive for telcos leading to:

• • Cost savings via a massive reduction in licensing, infrastructure, and support costs.
  • Vastly improved security with far fewer abandoned accounts being available for abuse.
  • An increased opportunity to focus and invest in core connectivity and innovative products.

So, with compelling data why are telcos still sticking with it?  The number one concern stalling the decision to do something with legacy email service is perceived customer disruption and how that might lead to churn. Good news is, the data tells a reassuring story.  According to a recent research paper published by ABI Research titled THE CLOCK IS TICKING: WHAT’S NEXT FOR TELCO EMAIL
‘Telcos need to actively consider the future outcomes for their telco-branded consumer email services. While many customers get a default email address (or more), only a minority of their customers actively use their telco-branded email address and confer value on it.’

Summing up

The email market operated by telcos, ISP’s and carriers globally is drastically over-provisioned. Decades of bundling and inertia have left millions of dormant accounts, inflating costs and complexity. As recent migrations and internal Atmail data demonstrate, divesting these legacy services is not only feasible, it’s prudent. The impact on customers will be much smaller than imagined, freeing operators to focus on what matters most in an evolving digital landscape. Reach out if you have an email service you want evaluated before it is too late.

“We experienced no measurable customer churn when transferring our email service.”

Large European Telco

Learn more about how you can successfully exit your email service today.