NineMSN offers Australia premium Hotmail service - News - Communications

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This story was printed from ZDNet Australia.
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NineMSN offers Australia premium Hotmail service

By James Pearce, ZDNet Australia
May 12, 2003
URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/communications/soa/NineMSN-offers-Australia-premium-Hotmail-service/0,130061791,120274416,00.htm

NineMSN has announced it will introduce a premium subscriber service that includes 10 MB of e-mail storage and the ability to redirect up to four e-mail addresses to the Hotmail account.

The service, dubbed NineMSN Extra Storage, will be available on Thursday for AU$37.95 per year. Australian Hotmail users lost POP e-mail retrieval support last year when the US introduced the premium service.

Until now, Australian users have suffered the negative effects of Microsoft's policy to drive customers towards its premium service -- including the deletion of their "Sent mail" after 30 days -- without having the opportunity to purchase the added features.

In addition to the extra storage and POP redirection, the new service will offer no account expiration (a Hotmail account is currently deleted if not used within 30 days), an increase in possible attachment size from 1 MB to 2 MB, the elimination of Sent mail deletion and an increase in 'Groups' storage from 3 MB to 30 MB.

Dominic Finnegan, marketing manager for NineMSN, told ZDNet Australia the company expected "people who use Hotmail as their primary e-mail account to be most interested in this product". This includes the self-employed, job seekers, home-makers and people who access their e-mail other than at work or at home.

"We have fairly modest requirements in terms of our targets," said Finnegan. "Even if we only convert one percent [of our users] it's still a great business for us to be in." Hotmail boasts 3.9 million active Australian accounts, and Hotmail expects the new offering would attract customers who are not current Hotmail users.

This is the first subscription offering by NineMSN, but Finnegan was quick to point out the company has provided paid content before, in terms of pay-for-play games like "Who wants to be a millionaire?", online personal services, mobile ringtones, mobile Hotmail and property listings.