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Mon Dec 8, 3:49 PM ET |
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By Ben Berkowitz
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) will offer its long-awaited bundle of premium services for people who already have high-speed Internet connections this month at a price below its major competitors, the company said on Monday.
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Priced starting at $5.95 per month -- with a free trial for the first three months -- the Yahoo Plus service marks an extension of Yahoo's subscription offerings to users outside its successful partnership with local telephone carrier SBC Communications Inc. .
Yahoo had told analysts in February that it would establish a "bring-your-own-access" bundle of premium services, but its aggressively low pricing and offer of a lengthy free trial came as a surprise to some who said it showed the company wanted to attract users in the face of competition from AOL and MSN.
The new Yahoo service includes some of the same content and services provided to customers of SBC Yahoo DSL but is designed for users with any Internet connection, regardless of provider.
America Online, a unit of Time Warner Inc., has been heavily promoting "AOL for Broadband," which starts at $14.95 a month. In August, Microsoft Corp. said it would launch a version of its MSN access service for people with broadband connections called MSN Premium, priced at $9.95 a month.
Having long passed its days as a search engine and portal that survived on advertising revenue alone, Yahoo has increasingly branched out into a range of services, such as job searches and personal ads, that generate subscription fees.
Yahoo Plus includes premium email accounts, anti-spam tools, instant messaging (news - web sites) software, online photo storage, streaming Internet radio, streaming video, a Web browser that can be customized and home pages for multiple family accounts.
"You start to bundle these types of services and it becomes more attractive," Deutsche Bank Securities analyst Jeetil Patel told Reuters. "What's interesting is that they're able to offer a free service for 90 days. They're clearly interested in building at least usage."
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