Bad news for e-mail users

The conversion of e-mail services into a paid service has come as a great setback for lakhs of young Indian surfers, especially in smaller cities like Bhopal, where most people, mainly students, depended heavily on this medium of exchanging notes to keep in touch with the rest of the world. Most students, and many of them from abroad, who could not afford an Internet connection of their own and thus depended to a very large extent on cyber cafes or campus facilities to exchange mail, are in a very black mood because of this development.

And like most things that cut you both ways, the conversion of the email into a pay-service is also bad news for cyber café owners also, since it will considerably reduce the number of customers frequenting their businesses for using the email service. But, experts say that the strategy to arrest the economic slump and increase revenue is not going to work. In fact, it would further decrease incomes across the board, or so they say.

Under the new dispensation, every e-mail user will have to pay a certain amount of subscription charges to the mail service company to avail the email service. The US-based email service, Yahoo!, was the first to convert their e-mail service into a paid service, and many similar organization are going to follow suit. But IT experts predict that it will not be a success in India, and is surely going to effect a number of Internet users.

Following on the footsteps of Yahoo!, another portal, usa.net, has also announced that its free service would end on 31 July, 2001. After that, all current mail-boxes of usa.net and its sister concern, net@address, will be deleted unless the 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. Since the payment has to be made in US dollars by credit card only, all the Indian users are being forced to shift their accounts to other e-mail service providers, but this may only be temporary reprieve if the writing on the wall is any indication of the times to come.

The Chief Manager, Net Link Software Group, Kishore has said that this change is sure to increase the revenue of dotcom companies in the long run, when most portals will make e-mail a paid service, but has his reservations about this transition in the near future. It is the Internet cafes who are going to be hit the hardest, as the number of surfers who frequent these cafes to surf the Net, or just chat up friends, or to take advantage of the free e-mail accounts will decrease if they are forced to shell out large amounts as fees for e-mail facility, in addition to fees they already pay to cafes for using their internet connectivity. The Internet cafe business is going to come down by 20 to 25 per cent, says Kishore.

Similarly, Abhishek Verma, who is Manager, Research and Training, at Net Link Software Group, predicts that the email pay service will affect the businesses of Internet cafe owners in the near future, since generally, people use these free email account services provided by dot com companies. The main beneficiary of this will be the Indian ISPs. Once one takes a paid Internet connection from VSNL, Satyam, or the dozen other service providers, they will offer at least one free e-mail address, he says.


The most affected will be the middle class, whose love affair with the e-mail had taken on the overtones of a necessity. Says Sagar Mehta, a student, "With my limited pocket money, I will not be able to surf the Net or keep writing to friends if I have to pay Rs 50-100 per month just for my email account. And if the fee is going to be more, I will have no recourse but to stop using it," she says mournfully.

The indigenous portal, 123india.com, had fixed 22 July, 2001, to convert the service into a premium model with some value additions at a starting price of Rs 99 a month.

Says Pawan Sharma, who works with a private company here, has worked out a very intriguing formula: "There are many like me who have already opened their account with Hotmail since usa.net announced it is making its e-mail service a paid service. I believe people will keep shifting their e-mail addresses to free mail sites until the last site is made a paid one. Thus, the maximum number of email facility users will be the maximum at the last site to become a paid email service provider."

Sujan Singh, a BA student says: "I have my email box with rediffmail.com. But once all Indian sites also go paid service, then I can only hope that these email sites will be more affordable than the 'phirang' ones! I cannot stop using my email account since it is a need now. I can only hope that the expense for these services will be affordable."

For those who have their own computer systems in the comfort of their homes, see the best bet-and the only other option- in taking a paid Internet connection from local Internet Service Providers. This is because once you have a paid Internet connection from ISPs like Satyam, VSNL, Dishnet or from any other ISP, they offer you at least one free e-mail address.

VSNL is already giving two e-mails free under its 'Monsoon Special' offer, with 5 MB of storage. Now the ISPs are expected to come out with their corresponding more attractive offers to attract customers. As of now, the ISPs seem to be the true beneficiaries of this transition, and are, for the moment, in a win-win situation, as more people will now begin approaching them to avail of the free e-mail address.

However, many in the industry say that the move will substantially bring down traffic, especially since advertisements are directly proportional to the traffic. Thus, the overall revenue of these portals, they say, will come down.

But there are chances of improvement in services provided by paid e-mail service providers, if they offer digital certificates to their subscribers, which will ensure a secure mail box and site. But as of now, that seems to the only silver lining to the ominous cloud hanging over the heads of millions of Internet surfers.

(CNS)