Internet electronic mail (hereinafter “email”) is growing at a phenomenal rate. Users often have multiple email accounts with multiple post offices and must log into each account to obtain or check email messages residing at each email service provider. Email clients generally handle this task for users. The process of logging into multiple email servers is generally performed as a background task as long as the user's computer is connected to the Internet. However, a user is generally not notified that new email messages exist unless the user is connected to the Internet. Therefore, the user must frequently connect to the Internet in order to receive new email in a timely manner. The task of checking for new email is generally left up to the client email software.
Subscribers and users of wireless networks have an even greater challenge. Setting up the equipment to make a connection is time consuming and, therefore, users generally wait until they have email to send before checking for new email. Once connected to the Internet, the client email software checks for any new email.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for a system and method for determining when new email is sent to a subscriber, and for sending an email notification to the subscriber alerting the subscriber of the new email. Furthermore, there is a need in the art for sending a wireless email notification to the subscriber and thus providing the subscriber with quicker and timelier access to email. There is a further need in the art to provide wireless email notification to a subscriber and sending that notification to a device that the subscriber uses to connect to the Internet or an internal network and set up that device to automatically make a connection back to the email server.