As all travellers know, accessing home e-mails from a free service such as Yahoo or Hotmail is fantastically useful, especially for those long trips away.

From 16 July, Hotmail will end the free service that makes it possible to check e-mail accounts held with net service providers via its website. There are apparently around 110 million Hotmail users who before now have managed all their e-mail accounts via the site. Earlier this year, Hotmail rivals Yahoo and Lycos introduced charges for similar services. Anyone wanting to check other accounts, so called POP mail, will have to sign up for the MSN Extra Storage service which, in the UK, costs £19.95 per year. In addition to getting access to the POP mail service, those signing up for Extra Storage get 10 megabytes of space that lets them get and send larger attachments and ensures that their account stays live even if they stop using it for 30 days. Many net experts see the charging of fees for once free services as an inevitable part of the web's development.

Many companies with websites are looking for new ways to offset the cost of running their net business now that revenue from advertising is harder to come by and investor funds are scarce.

Anyone wanting to still use a free POP mail service can find a comprehensive list at emailaddresses.com.