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By Joey Gardiner, 10 October 2001 17:30

NEWS The age of free web-based email is coming to an end as another.com - the UK's largest web-based email provider, announces it is to start charging for its service. The news adds weight to the growing opinion, voiced again by the Wall Street Journal this yessterday, that the era of "free" content and services on the internet is nearly over. Another.com, which lets users choose their email name from a range 15,000 domains, will charge users on a subscription basis of around £15 a year or £1.50 a month for basic email services. The service, which works in the same way as US equivalents Hotmail and Yahoo! mail, says it can get away with charging because its users value their personalised names. Typical another.com email addresses are dropdeadgorgeous@hippiechick.com and airguitar@heavymetal.co.uk. Another.com, which has 1.6m users, will not charge existing users for basic email, but new sign-ups will be levied a fee. It will charge all of its customers extra for increased storage and email forwarding services. CEO Steve Bowbrick said: "Why will users pay for a service they can get in other places for free? This is a question that is animating the entire industry at the moment. We are convinced our pay service will work, because ours is not a commodity service, our users really identify with the names they choose for themselves. "This is about the industry growing up, and having the confidence to exploit the infrastructure and services it has built. I don't think there's a choice anymore." The service is the first web-based consumer email provider in the UK to charge. Currently hotmail in the US charges for extra storage, but the UK market has no charges at all. Yahoo! doesn't charge for its mail service, but says it is constantly reviewing operations. However, a growing number content providers, including Yahoo!, Salon.com and The Times newspaper have recently started to charge for their services. Jupiter MMXI analyst Daniel Stevenson said another.com will have a tough time: "The danger is that customers will simply go somewhere else. But in the long-term sites simply won't be able to survive unless they start charging - this is the way things are going."