A short time ago a colleague thought of switching Internet service providers (ISP). He had had the same provider for many years and therefore was using the provider assigned e-mail address. The problem, he would loose his long time e-mail address when changing providers. Addressess like @att.net, @bellsouth.net, @comcast.net, and many others are basically rented from the provider and only available to use if using the ISP. The solution is to use an independent e-mail address like the ones provided by Google’s GMail, Microsoft’s Live, Yahoo, and others. These addresses are usually free and allow the use of an e-mail client like Outlook, Apple Mail, or Entourage. It will not matter if changing the ISP in the future or move to a different geographic location, you can keep the same e-mail address. Many ISP’s allow for the forwarding of their e-mail address to an alternate one. In other words, you could forward all e-mails from @comcast.net to your new @gmail.com account during a transition period. The old ISP e-mail address will not be needed after a few months of using your new e-mail address
Better yet, you could register your own domain name. Domain names are relatively inexpensive with many providers offering custom domains and e-mail hosting for a few dollars a month. Providers like Network Solutions, Register.com, and GoDaddy are some good ones.