In a few months, MSN Israel will begin charging a fee for its Hotmail e-mail service, which has been offered for free up until now
Sources inform ''Globes'' that the company is conducting a local survey as part of MSN global survey, to check the public's willingness to pay for premium services.
Premium services will include expanding personal e-mailbox capacity from three to ten megabytes, and allowing a customer to keep a mailbox time for an extended period even if it is infrequently used. The company currently has the right to transfer user names of inactive e-mailboxes to new users.
The new strategy, coming from a company whose banner was free e-mail, and was a key edge in its advertising, is not surprising, given the liquidity condition of Internet companies.
MSN figures show Israelis have 400,000 e-mailboxes with the .co.il suffix, and another 300,000 with the .com suffix.
Senior executives of other Israeli content companies recently said there will be no alternative to educating the public to pay for content they have been used to receiving gratis.
There was no comment from MSN Israel CEO Doron Liebstein by web-posting.
Published by Israel's Business Arena on 8 August 2001