@wayner46 I agree that any attempt to force the owners of the operamail address to do anything. My hope, which gets less every day, is to find someone at Opera Software who is prepared to explain what they are doing and why. As someone who has lived by believing in the f**k up theory of life as much more prevalent than the currently fashionable conspiracy theory of everything, I still suspect that the decision was an ill thought out technical or business one (e.g. "lets save money by closing down unnecessary domain names")
Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, and none of us have managed to find such a someone. It is true that Fastmail could be more helpful, but they are not under any obligation, and it may be that they are happy to get shot of dealing with Opera. Clearly from the sell-out, buy back etc there is a history there.
Not given up hope yet, but busy choosing a good personal domain, and preparing for when I, personally, throw in the towel

@sgunhouse Thanks for the clarification, and thanks to @arobbo for your input. In general I am all in favour of fastmail's strict approach to privacy, but in our case it works against us, firstly since we can't get a handle on how many we are, and secondly because they might have offered a means of getting in contact with those responsible. Thus far, I have had no joy in trying to get in contact with either Opera Software ASA, who, I believe, own the operamail domain, or Golden Brick Capital Private Equity, who I believe, effectively own Opera Software. I'll give it a week or two more

@alphaville Noted, but i'm not quite willing to throw in the towel just yet. I had a similar battle with compuserve before I moved to operamail. While I eventually lost that, I did get pointed to a work round which allowed me to retain my ancient (numeric) compuserve mailbox for a further year or two
In the case of operamail I figure it is just as likely to be an unthinking screw up, as to be part of a machiavellian plot.
i'll keep this forum informed if I make any progress. I remain open to any suggestions as to who to contact.

@sgunhouse thanks for putting me right. I don't pretend to be an adept of these forums, but I did search quite widely, using both operamail and opera mail. In any case, the important step seems to me to identify whichever of the splintered parts of Opera now hold the operamail domain so that they can explain what they propose.

The suggestion that whoever it is wants to protect the opera brand doesn't wash with me. I would guess that most/many of the operamail users are also long time opera users and that, having been happy when opera chose fastmail as partner in place of its German predecessor they/we cherish the quality of the combined/linked services.

Any suggestions on who to contact and how?

I have hunted around for other threads with operamail but cannot find any. As a long time Opera user, I also signed up, many years ago, to operamail. This service was hived off and is currently operated by fastmail (an Australian company).

I am very well satisfied with the service. Unfortunately fastmail have recently advised me that they will not be able to renew my subscription because Opera is taking back the operamail address.

I can see nothing here concerning this. I amvery keen to retain my current operamail e-mail address so would like to know what, if any are your plans in this respect?