So I got this Tweet from Mai_ling on twitter and she said:

So I did some digging around the net and found it is something that is a common practice for ISP’s to block PORT 25.   If you want to find out if Cricket is blocking your mail service you can easily follow these instructions to see if port 25 is actively being blocked.  So what are some options in fixing this little problem.

[ad#cricket-right-ez]Due to spammers exploiting port 25, ISP have been blocking port 25 for other domains but theirs.   You can receive email but not send email.  Most ISP’s have a way for you to have an Alternative Port that you can use and you should check with your email domain provider to see if you can send and receive on either a SSL or another Port.

You could set up your email client to receive on port 25 but send out on the SMTP server of Gmail.  This would be useful for people who want to send mail out but not have to change there email address.  People will still see it coming from whatevername@whatever.com.   You can tell Thunderbird to send out on the port and yet use your domain as your email address.

Another possible solution that may work for some is to sign up for Google Apps.  The downside of this is It cost 50$ a year but that is 4.20$ a month to be added on to your Cricket Modem charge.  This looks promising and has a 30 day trial so, if it works then you will know before you have to pay for anything.  This should be dealt with by Cricket, they should have a way for there customers to send and receive email without having to jump through hoops to send email and receive email.