1 Email = 50 sen

Tricubes Bhd has confirmed that it will charge government agencies about 50 sen for every email sent to Malaysians who are account-holders. At a press conference in Kuala Lumpur, Tricubes chief executive Khairun Zainal Mokhtar stressed that users of the email will not be charged. But they will be expected to pay an additional cost if they want their mails to be more "secure" and for encryption facilities, which are optional.

"But our default setting is a basic 'Secure Sockets Layer' (SSL) which is quite secure. Even with the friendly emails, and without the billing, everything is through SSL. Users can also send personal emails to their friends and it would be completely free," he said.

According to Khairun, the project will target 5.4 million subscribers to its email service by end of this year. Despite the uproar over the project, which is to be launched in July, this would mean that the company is targeting to sign up an average of 900,000 users every month. Tricubes conceded that it is a "stretch target" for a 100 percent subscription from all Malaysians above 18 years old by 2015.

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