Michael.Dillon@btradianz.com said:

That is something that businesses will pay for.

But first, ISPs have to put their hands up and take collective responsibility for Internet email as a service that has value and not just as some kind of loss leader for Internet access services.

Many large organizations already have already, in a case by case way, set up private mail peering with others they exchange large volumes of mail with. This "trusted traffic" is often able to bypass the expense and delay of the spam-filter farm, making the cost and hassle of a parallel mail infrastructure worthwhile to them, and everyone is happy. There is no reason you can't pick another port, modify one of the many FOSS mail servers out there to do whatever it is you are proposing, and start providing this kind of thing on a more formal basis. Call it an email toll-road. (hmmmmm, would a toll-road be troll free? I might pay for that). If you are able to create a solution that works, and that people will pay for, then you'll be happy. Since it works in parallel, it won't disrupt anyone who doesn't want to play along, so they won't be anymore unhappy than they are now. I don't think what you have been talking about so far will work, and I don't think I'm alone in that. But hey, prove me wrong, and maybe someday I'll be writing a check to you to make sure I get email every day. Best, Ben