Q: How do you setup a pop account?

You are going to have to "fool" the email program to change to POP. EarthLink must maintain an IMAP account for the mail app to try that. Delete the account you have tried to set up. Then go in and attempt to setup the program again. When it asks for the email address and password, purposely put in the wrong password. It should fail to verify and then take you to a screen to enter POP or IMAP as the account type. After selecting POP, you will then need to change the password so it will correctly verify the account. That should take care of starting, then continue the setup and fill in all of the required information from EarthLink to complete the setup.

Select Add Account in Settings>Mail then select Other and add the account manually. You will need to know your setup settings from Earthlink. Go to their web site and they should have a setup routine/instructions for iPad.

I would assume they are using the Manual settings, since EarthLink would not be an automatic. The problem lies in the fact that many email providers maintain both POP and IMAP accounts. After attempting to create the account and entering the email address and password, the iPhone will check and will automatically assume it is an IMAP account, when the user wants to setup a POP account. There is no other way to tell it to use POP if the verification fails. You cannot access that settings page without doing as I provided the instructions for.