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Veronique Saunier

Yvonne Chan

Call-back operator City Telecom (CTI) has launched a free e-mail service on the World-Wide Web similar to popular United States services such as Hotmail and RocketMail.

 CTImil will enable people without Internet accounts to send and retrieve e-mail messages.

 Anyone will be able to access e-mail from any Net-connected personal computer equipped with a Web browser anywhere in the world without downloading messages.

 Users also will be able to send Internet faxes free within the SAR. Faxes sent outside Hong Kong will be billed at a rate $1 below CTI's regular fax rates.

 CTI spent $10 million to launch the project and expected the investment to be returned within 12 months, chairman Ricky Wong said.

 CTImil marks the company's first move away from its call-back service since the January announcement that Hongkong Telecom's monopoly would end.

 Industry analysts have said introduction of international simple resale for voice services would kill the call-back industry by offering better line quality at the same price.

 CTI said its free service would attract new users to the Internet by giving them an e-mail address and a taste of what 'electronic life' was like.

 'CTI's objective is to see everyone in Hong Kong with an e-mail address,' Mr Wong said.

 The company aimed to have 300,000 subscribers by the end of this year, he said.

 CTImil initially will be marketed to CTI's customer base of 428,000, of which 18,000 are corporate subscribers and 410,000 residential users.

 International Data Corp analyst Pete Hitchen said he believed the no-cost service would draw bargain-happy Hong Kongers but CTI's target user base of 300,000 was 'a bit steep'.

 IDC forecast there would be 372,000 Internet users in the SAR by the end of this year.

 CTI's free service would not be a threat to Internet service providers (ISPs) offering paid Internet subscriptions, Hong Kong Internet Service Providers Association secretary Charles Mok said.

 Internet usage would increase through free services, which eventually would lead to a rise in subscriptions.

 'Ultimately, people will need their own account,' said Mr Mok, general manager of HKNet.

 A drawback was that CTImil, like other free e-mail services, would rely on advertising and Net advertising in Hong Kong was 'not as good as in the US at the moment', Mr Mok said, though it had growth potential in the long term.

 CTImil subscribers will be required to provide personal information, although CTI will not sell that information to anyone.

 However, junk e-mail - or spam - would not be blocked by CTImil because it was nearly impossible to do so, Mr Wong said.

 Users also are required to provide a credit-card reference which many people may be reluctant to do.

 CTI hopes to boost its revenues through the additional fees it will charge for international Internet fax transmissions and for providing additional storage capacity, adding to CTI subscribers' average spending of $300.

 Each CTImil subscriber will be allocated an initial five megabytes of storage, compared with 3 MB for RocketMail. Additional storage will be charged at $20 per MB, per month.

 CTI plans to add applications to CTImil that would enable users to receive faxes.

 It also hopes to negotiate agreements with utilities to provide on-line billing and payment functions for them. CTI's Web site is www. cti.hk.



CTI free Web e-mail service aims to draw 300,000 users