Vsnl Stops Free Business E-Mails

Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd (VSNL) has stopped its free business e-mail service from early this week. Instead, it will charge users an additional fee of Rs 600 a year for routing their e-mail through VSNL servers.

The move is aimed at raking in additional revenue as well as lowering the burden on its overloaded servers. Following the strategic decision, the company is now asking corporates without individual domain names to subscribe to the recently launched V-mail service, a senior VSNL official said.

V-mail offers corporates mail solutions under their personal domains and also includes domain mail servers (DMS) of users. Firms that may benefit from V-mail are small and medium service companies, banks, mutual funds, e-magazines and portals.

Though VSNL had earlier indicated that it could charge fees in the future, it had never said it would stop free services unilaterally. However, companies with their own domain names and using their US-based mail servers remain unaffected.

Corporates using VSNL servers for outgoing e-mails have been increasingly utilising the capacity of VSNL without paying any additional fee.

The country