Intermittent failure to send emails when away from home

[#1]

HI, I am using Outlook 2010 and I have set it up according to the guide "Send mail from any connection (SMTP Authentication)"
It usually works ok when receiving mail but often fails to send mail when in different locations. I'm touring in France at the moment and the service has been very intermittent when sending emails.
When checking my settings as per the guide, during the test the first part "Logon to incoming mail server (POP3)" is completed successfully but during the "Send test email" section I get a failure and the following message "Send test e-mail message: Your e-mail server rejected your login. Verify your user name and password for this account in Account Settings." I am also prompted to enter my password a couple of times before receiving the error message .

[#2]

Hi Nomadic,
it seems as though you have set it up right. It may be that some connections don't allow you to use other outgoing mail servers, only the ones they specify.
Jojo

[#3]

Thanks Jojo, I think that may be the reason.
It's unfortunate because I would prefer to use Outlook for sending and replying to emails, as it stands I will need to continue using Windows Live Mail and Hotmail for making replies or sending new mail. Since I travel a lot it may be better if I switch all my email to Hotmail or Gmail and I shouldn't have any problems.
It's not practical to use webmail because I can't always get a reliable wifi connection.
I was wondering why the POP3 server accepts my password but SMTP sometimes doesn't.

[#4]

The SMTP message rejection is probably nothing to do with password problems. If the mobile network provider chooses to block access to external mail relays via port 25, the transmissions will not even get to the Plusnet mail relays for the password to be checked. However to Outlook on your own computer the symptoms appear the same as "incorrect username or password" so that is what it reports and gives you a chance to correct.

[#5]

Thanks Spraxyt, I was pleased when I learned about the ability to configure SMTP authorisation with Plusnet email because it is a lot easier to reply to emails I have received. Now it seems that I cannot depend on it so I will need to switch to Hotmail or Gmail instead.
I have not been using mobile communications recently when in Europe, just wifi connections at different locations in Italy and France this year. I can't afford the extortionate roaming charges.

[#6]

Hi there,
Bear in mind you can set up a gmail account and just use their outgoing mail server to send your messages with the username and password you create. You'll still be able to get all your email from us as normal that way.
Having said that you may still run into the issues you've been experiencing where some networks lock down outgoing mail to their own relay server only, but that's usually mobile networks rather than ISPs so it should work alright on wifi that way.
Hope that helps.

[#7]

Better still, perhaps Plusnet can enable access to their SMTP servers via the submission port (587) as ISPs are unlikely to restrict/prohibit that traffic given that it cannot be used for direct-to-MX spamming which is what they are trying to prevent.
Mathew