Microsoft poised to hike MSN access

NEWS Microsoft is considering hiking the price of MSN access to bring it in line with AOL's offerings. The company said that it was evaluating new services for a forthcoming version of MSN and is considering a price rise for premium services. Microsoft currently charges US users $21.95 a month for standard dial-up access. A price increase could put it on par with AOL's monthly fee of $23.90. The increase is likely to hit just US subscribers as MSN access remains free to European users. Despite a series of promotional campaigns aimed a luring AOL users to the Microsoft camp, MSN has just seven million subscribers worldwide compared with AOL's 32 million. Microsoft has also recently introduced a subscription version of its free Hotmail service in the US.