Let this be a lesson to you - only *ever* use a portable email address! That means either buy yourself a domain name and use that (expensive), or go to Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail or one of the other zillions of providers who'll let you pick up email from anywhere (cheap).

You won't be able to connect to two ISPs simultaneously on the same phone line. But what you *may* still be able to do is get their email through your new ISP's connection. That's only a *maybe*, not for definite - check your ISP's details. As per Richard's suggestion, PAYG is usually cheaper for this.

Personally, I reckon your mate who's sticking with the crap service is being dumb. It's easy enough to email all your friends and tell them you're moving your email. And this time use something portable for your email (see above), so that you don't have to keep changing your email address every time your ISP goes tits-up.

Graham.