End is near for 'free' Internet

Vishnu K. Mahmud, Contributor, Jakarta

The writing has been on the wall for more than a year now and some still cannot believe, much less accept, the idea.

Yahoo.com, the world's number one internet portal, has recently announced that it will begin charging for some of its free web services, in particular e-mail forwarding, and POP3 mail-client access.

In other words, if you have been receiving e-mail via Yahoo's servers and downloading them to your computer with Outlook Express, Eudora Mail, or other mail programs, you're going to have to reach for your wallet.

Yahoo's web-based, e-mail service -- the one where you access a special web page to read your messages -- will still be available to users at no charge, however.

Although the cost of $29.99 per year (or US$19.99 through April 24) for the mail-client service is rather reasonable, many people must be cringing at the thought of paying for a service that, until now, has always been free.

They most likely think that using the internet is getting to be expensive in that they must pay for the telephone call (for those using dial-ups) with its hourly internet fee.

Yahoo! is not the only one that has begun charging for its services. Many raised their eyebrows last year when Salon.com, the popular news portal, launched its "premium" content section, with a subscription fee, while popular electronic greeting card site Blue Mountain (www.bluemountain.com) recently began charging users a yearly rate for sending out e-cards.

Why are so many companies now charging fees for previously free products and services? The answer lies in the public's perception that creating an internet site has no substantial costs.

In reality, there are web site hosting fees, technical support costs, bandwidth charges, along with a myriad of other expenses to consider.

For content-producing web sites, the overhead costs include journalists' pay, news-feed licenses, and office rental space. Thus, if a company produces news content for free, how are they going to pay for all those things?

Have you ever noticed the amazingly large advertising banners on the side of a news site -- or those annoying pop-up (or pop- under) ads or the large promotion graphic smack dab in the middle of a news item? This strategic marketing placements are just one of the ways web portals obtain revenue.

The user basically pays the web site for viewing their content by downloading the advertising along with the internet page they are reading.

But we are already doing this in real life, by listening to the jingles on the radio and those 30-second ad spots on TV. The difference is, it is on our cost. Downloading advertising takes up time, and bandwidth on the part of the user.

Advertising and subscription services may not be able to fully finance full-scale portal operations. However, the idea of paying for what you use must be accepted as more and more services utilize the expensive infrastructure of the internet.

Reading the news in your daily paper or watching TV is not free, and is paid for in different ways. Some by subscription, others by advertising.

More importantly, the internet community should not consider subscription services as a cost, but as a value. Would people pay money to buy a newspaper? Would they purchase a ticket to watch a movie? Would they buy a CD to listen to music?

The answer is yes, since they consider them valuable services that must be maintained through compensation.

If all news portals worldwide started to charge fees from the beginning, we would have none of these problems.

It would be grudgingly accepted as another fact of life, paying for what you need. But because of the punch-drunk days of the IPO tech boom, and some questionable revenue streams, providing free services has become the de facto default for web portals, and news sites.

Looking back on Yahoo's services, is $29.99 a year worth it? Consider this: Yahoo! is a publicly listed company that caters to a rather fussy internet public.

They have a full complement of IT staff, and hardware to cater to a worldwide user base that requires their services 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And this user base will not accept any downtime or excuses.

You can also access your e-mail from anywhere around the world through its free, web-based service in addition to a host of other services.

If we keep asserting that content and service must be free for the user, the internet and its underlying services will never be able to evolve and flourish.

New sites and businesses will never be able to get off the ground because people will not be confident enough to want to pay for the hard work of others.

In short, some things are just worth paying for.