Free options may choke paid e-mail model

"e-mail has become part of my daily routine. i cannot imagine paying for it. to me, it means free services," says nitin gupta, a marketing executive who has created his virtual office on his e-mail account. however, all is not lost yet. internet itself holds the key to circumvent these subscription-based models. gupta has to either disband his virtual office or pay to maintain his account after july 31.due to a pay-for-use model adopted by netaddress, zdnet and 123india, thousands of e-mail users like gupta will lose their mail accounts in a week's time. "e-mail is the most valuable service on the net. even people who do not have connection but access internet, have at least one account. if all the sites go pay, then the users are left with no choice but to pay for the service," said neelu sneh, while surfing in a cybercafe. sneh has more than one account to compliment the loss of one e-mail id. "as soon as we got message to pay from the service provider, we switched over to other accounts," she said. many users like sneh have switched their mails to free accounts and are not willing to pay for the proposed comprehensive, customised and advertisement free service. and, with many options for free mails available on the net, doubts are being raised over the success of these pay services. but 123india.com feels that slump in internet advertising and lack of fresh funding will force free providers to adopt a subscription model and users have to pay for the services "the user has to be serious about his e-mail account and the content he gets. the payment model will ensure loyalty to one account and the user will get exclusive services like stock quotes over it," said sunjeev swarup, senior manager, 123india.com. moreover, a new concept of creating 'premium segment', with services and content not be available to free users, is also catching fast. just like e-mail users, music fans will also have to pay for downloading their favourite numbers from napster, though for totally different reasons. "napster was no doubt good. paying for online music is out of question. there are sites like mp3.com, mp3download.com, audiofind.com and many more from where digital music can be downloaded for free," said 24-year vipul, a software engineer. as soon as the copyright trouble started for napster, vipul copied his downloaded songs on cds. today, he has made cds of more than 150 songs. "there are few songs in my collection which are not easily available on the net. whether napster remains or not, i have collected songs virtually for free," he added. and, there are many more like vipul who have made their collection. same rule applies for e-mail sites too. if few sites ask for money for its usage there are many others offering similar services for free. in fact, sabeer bhatia's hotmail, which was later bought over by bill gates, gained popularity because it was a free service. last week, even hotmail gave users few anxious moments when look and feel of the site was changed. but it still remains free. says swarup: "free mail was a sample of things to come. users now understand our services and we are hopeful to convert all our two million subscribers to the premium segment." at present, 123india.com is the only indian company to charge for its e-mail services. but foreign companies like zdnet and netaddress have also decided to charge for their services. "indians will prefer to pay in rupees than dollars," swarup said. but it remains to be seen whether the user will pay for the value added services when he has option for free accounts with similar services.