[rssoconnor]

It's been a while, but as I recall your ISP will provide you with an email address. So if you have internet, you have an email address. Sure, if you change your ISP then you have to update your email address everywhere. But the same is true for phone numbers if you change phone companies.

As for email clients, just use whatever Netscape comes with.

[generalpf]

Not sure where you live but in Canada and the USA the phone companies legally have to allow you to port your existing number over from one company to another.

[ipcress_file]

You can port your number between providers here in Canada too. I even ported my old landline over to VOIP.

[Kwpolska]

Was that true in the 90s, when Netscape and ISP email addresses were in use?

[dlandau]

I remember porting numbers becoming a thing and I was born in 1989 so it must have been late 90s earliest. In Finland though, so don't know about north america