E-mail is now 'fee-mail'

By Anand Parthasarathy

KOCHI, JULY 15. That old American adage ``There's no such thing as a free lunch'', is being proved with a vengeance on the Internet this week. Less than a month after the mother of all portals, Yahoo, abruptly converted its U.S.-based e-mail service into a paid service, another popular mailbox, this time with a huge Indian customer list, usa.net, has also announced that its free service will end on July 31.

After that date, all current mailboxes of usa.net (and its sister service, net@address) will be deleted unless users sign up for a new paid service at an introductory price of $29.99 per month, rising to $49.99. For this they are promised 10 MB of storage space - and no irritating advertisements. However since this payment has to be made in U.S. dollars by credit card only - it will mean almost all Indian users will be forced to move away to other e-mail services.

The first of the `desi' e-mail providers also changed from a free to a pay mode this week: The portal 123india.com, told its 2 million-plus subscribers that by the coming weekend (July 22), the service would convert into a `premium' model with some value additions at a starting price of Rs. 99 a month.

Industry watchers warn that other Indian portals offering free e- mail boxes may follow suit - unless they have the commercial clout to weather the current crisis in the dotcom business. However as of today the pioneer Indian portal rediff.com continues to offer free e-mail - as does the leading language portal, webduniya.com and its Tamil and Malayalam versions, webulagam and weblokam.

The biggest international free e-mail service, Hotmail - which Microsoft bought from India-born `netreprenuer', Mr. Sabeer Bhatia for $400 million four years ago, - is also expected to remain free in the immediate future, because according to U.S. industry pundits, the company has a long term strategy to overtake the number-one U.S. Internet Service Provider (ISP), America On Line (AOL).

However Microsoft is a vocal opponent of the `open' movement in Internet and sooner or later may convert its e-mail into a revenue earner.

So what are the options available to the lakhs of Indian surfers who have suddenly lost their e-mail identity this week? The only safe bet is the Indian ISPs. Once you take a paid Internet connection from VSNL, Satyam, Dishnet or the dozen other service providers, they will offer you at least one free e-mail address.

VSNL's `Monsoon Special' offer still open, gives two e- mail addresses with 5 MB of storage with each subscription.

However this is small comfort to lakhs of younger Indian surfers, mostly students, who cannot afford a long term connection and depend on cybercafes or campus facilities to surf the net and exchange mail.

They may soon be faced with the harsher realities of an Internet economy in its new `pay and play' avatar.

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Section  : National
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