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To: Neeka who wrote (124016)	9/16/2002 11:54:56 AM
From: waitwatchwander	Respond to of 152472

Will More Internet Portal Services Turn Fee-Based? etienglish.com By Kim In-jin Thursday, September 12, 2002 As DAUM Communications announced its plan to change its mobile Internet service into fee-based service beginning from mid-September, industry observers are paying keen attention whether other portal service providers will follow suit. Most service providers, though saying that they don't have a plan to charge fees, still hold possibility to do so in the future, provided that DAUM's policy succeeds. DAUM announced that it will start to charge fees for not only mail alarm service, but also e-mail, cafe, fortune, and movie services. Under the recent decision by DAUM, user will have to pay 500 won as monthly fee for e-mail and cafe services, and pay a certain amount for each use of fortune telling and movie services. The policy will be applied to SK Telecom and LG Telecom on September 10 and September 16, respectively. Unlike DAUM, other portal service providers say they do not have plans for fee-based services. MSN, Freechal, Neowiz, and Dreamwiz have applied fee-based services to some killer services such as mail alarm and wired/wireless integrated messenger, or charged some additional fees for bell sound, avartar, and chatting services, but will not charge fees for basic services like mail or community services, as DAUM did. An official at Freechal, said, "Still, it is important to increase the number of mobile Internet users. We do not plan to charge fees until the end of this year." An official at Dreamwiz said, "In case of mail alarm and messenger services, for which users are willing to pay charges, charging some fees will be unavoidable. However, we do not have any plan to charge fees for our all services." However, they are paying keen attention to the success of DAUM's fee-based services. In particular, they have keen interest in whether the fee-based mail and community services will succeed without any backlashes from users. An official at MSN said, "In order to increase the profitability of portal service providers, it is necessary to charge fees on mail services. However, we need to change user's mindset before doing so. MSN is also considering to charge fees for services but we do not have specific timetable for that. However, it is certain that we have much interest in this because the industry no.1 DAUM also started fee-based services."