Sep 26, 2001 04:23 PM
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Usa.net and 123india.com have made mail services on the net a paid service. It's rumoured that hotmail and yahoo are waiting and watching before starting paid e-mail services. The rates offered by usa.net and 123india are not realistic for common Indian users. 123india charges about Rs.1000 per year as subscription.
The market for this business will come from people who dont have personal internet connection. Those who have one will not subscribe since the ISP's provides them free mail and competition among the ISPs will ensure its continuance. Infact I think more people will go in for more ISP subscriptions as some ISP's give multi mail ids. There are ISP's which allow about 3-5 mail-ids. So there will be a group of people who will share the service as it would be much cheaper when compared to the paid services.
Will the people who do not have an internet connection be ready to pay up for the paid services? I really do not think so as these people go to cyber cafes to browse and pay up for these services. So I am sure it will pinch their pockets to pay up again for the paid mail services and a majority of this community are students. People will just move out of these paid services and go in for sites that offer free mail. The tech people or people with a net facility in the office will opt in to use their official mail-ids for personal use also.
Also it would be better idea to book a domain name and use it for mails. Even most web hosting companies provide 2-3 mail ids. So you can have these mail-ids with your name eg dolly@dolly.com rather than paying for use of others names. It amounts to almost the same cost of about Rs.1000 - 1200 per year with your own domain name and what more you get about 20 MB of space.If required you can also host your personal site.
