Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- AT&T is shutting down its email-to-text and text-to-email companies on June 17, 2025.
- The characteristic lets customers ship texts by way of e-mail and obtain texts as emails utilizing particular AT&T addresses.
- Whereas some discovered it helpful, many are glad it’s going away, calling it a spam magnet that overstayed its welcome.
AT&T is quietly retiring a few its long-standing, if under-the-radar, options. The service has introduced that its email-to-text and text-to-email companies shall be shut down beginning June 17, 2025, and never everybody is unhappy to see them go.
In case you’ve by no means used them, these companies can help you ship and obtain textual content messages by way of e-mail. All you needed to do was sort in a telephone quantity adopted by @txt.att.internet or @mms.att.internet, and your message can be delivered as an SMS or MMS to an AT&T person. Equally, customers might obtain incoming texts as emails. It was a simple system that served as a useful bridge between textual content messaging and e-mail, particularly earlier than the rise of contemporary messaging apps.
Reddit person ben305 seems to have been the primary to identify and share the shutdown discover in a put up on the r/ATT subreddit. “I didn’t catch this information anyplace else on the whole thing of the web,” they wrote, after discovering the replace whereas troubleshooting an email-to-SMS situation. In addition they famous that AT&T hadn’t despatched any notification in regards to the deprecation, a sentiment echoed by others within the thread.
“Having @mms.att.internet / @txt.att.internet was good to have for almost 20 years,” the Redditor wrote, including that though they didn’t rely upon the characteristic for something crucial, its disappearance got here with none fanfare. The official help web page discover itself reads like a short memo:
That’s about as a lot rationalization as prospects have gotten up to now. Notably, this transformation additionally impacts Cricket Wi-fi customers. Messages despatched to @txt.cricket.internet or @mms.cricket.internet will cease working as properly.
Regardless of its age, the service nonetheless has a loyal area of interest following. Some customers within the Reddit thread shared that they’d used it commonly, significantly for receiving alerts or notifications again within the day. Others, nonetheless, appeared relieved, with many declaring that the service had grow to be a spam magnet, and a few even shared that they’d beforehand requested AT&T to deactivate it for that very cause.
And that’s probably a part of the explanation for its demise. Whereas AT&T hasn’t provided an official rationalization, low utilization and the uptick in spam visitors could have made the characteristic extra of a problem than a profit to take care of. It’s additionally telling that, up to now, many shoppers seem to have acquired no formal discover from the corporate, only a quietly up to date help article.
So, are you going to overlook AT&T’s email-to-text companies? Or are you amongst those that had been glad to see the again of them? Tell us if, and the way, you used the characteristic within the feedback.
