Yahoo! vs Cox Communications, round one

Argh. So my bigmerl.com email was getting cumbersome being used on a web app, so I moved it to Outlook Express. Little beknown to me, Cox blocks you from opening a SMTP port on Yahoos servers... Dear Cox, please be known that I am not as super reliant on you as you hope and you should take my request seriously. I'm not asking for the moon, just to be able to use my Internet per the agreement with you.