Press News

Budapest, August 15, 2003

The currently available services of [freemail] will continue to be free

Axelero Internet Hungary is adding extra services to [freemail], the most popular free mailing system in Hungary. Larger storage space and the filtering of unwanted advertisements (spam) are available on demand, for a charge. Besides the introduction of paying services Axelero is raising the size of incoming message storage capacity free for every [freemail] user, to 5 MB.

Although the popularity of [freemail] and the number of mailboxes keep growing – on July 31 there were 1 358 107 mailboxes in operation – according to an online market survey users who are otherwise satisfied with the quality of service would like to get rid of the limitations typical of free mailing systems. Most of them would like more storage space, and many are disturbed by the flood of spamming messages. Therefore, in order to raise the quality of [freemail] service, from the middle of August new paying services will be added under the name of [freemail] extra.

In the future, when someone opens a new mailbox on [freemail], he will be offered two new services as well. One is the opportunity to expand the default storage space of 5 Mbytes to 10 Mbytes for HUF 500 gross for a period of three months (the maximum allowed storage space is 55 Mbytes). The other is spam filtering, which also costs HUF 500 gross for three months. The filtering software checks every incoming message, scores the features typical of advertising messages and private messages, then it will further manage the messages according to the filtering level defined by the user. Besides the introduction of paying services, Axelero is raising the size of incoming message storage capacity free for every [freemail] user, to 5 MB.

Every customer with a [freemail] address is able to subscribe to the extra services. At present the services can be ordered in the form of a premium rate SMS message sent from Westel and Pannon cards, the desired services will be activated a few minutes after order placement. Axelero also provides a call center for the ordering of these services.

A few words on Freemail

Freemail was launched in November 1997 by C3 Cultural and Communication Center, an entity established with the cooperation of Soros Foundation, Silicon Graphics Hungary and Matav. When C3 was transformed into a foundation in 1999, Freemail passed into the possession of Matávnet (legal predecessor of Axelero) and became part of the [origo] portal. The system continues to be operated by the staff of C3.

In the beginning the service was running on only one – Linux-powered – computer. The first major technological change took place in February 1999, at that time there were already six machines supporting mailing services. After increasing demands and the parallel developments, today the system of [freemail] comprises 18 computers located in the Data Park of Axelero.
Subject to the agreement concluded between Soros Foundation and MATÁVnet, [freemail] will be operated in the long-term with unchanged access methods (http, pop3 and dial-up pop3) and continues to be a free service, with continuous technical and content developments.
The system is under continuous development, in response to the needs of current users and e-mail traffic. It has 1 358 107 live mailboxes, with an estimated user base of 750 307 people.
Simultaneously with the implementation of the new design of [freemail] several long-awaited comfort services were also introduced. They include virus scanning, the opportunity to specify e-mail delivery rules (filters), the opportunity to save incomplete messages, the opportunity to save the messages onto disk, the opportunity to sort the messages in the individual files according to any parameter (sender, subject, size, date of delivery) and confirmation on reading.