The service has been provided free of charge for the best part of two decades.

Telecommunications provider eir has confirmed that users of the eircom.net email service will be charged a subscription fee of €5.99 per month from 31 March onwards. The fee is being introduced, eir says, to “invest in the maintenance and improvement of the service going forward”. When asked for further details on how the service would be improved once the fee is introduced, an eir spokesperson said that “improvements will include increased storage capacity for users”. It was not revealed by eir how many customers will be affected by the new charge, but the number is believed to be in the tens of thousands. In a statement to JOE an eir spokesperson said: “eir will introduce a €5.99/month subscription charge for the eircom.net email service from 31 March 31, 2020. “The charge will be used to invest in the maintenance and improvement of the service going forward. If an account holder does not get in touch with eir to arrange payment, the service will cease after 60 days and the account will be permanently deleted after that time. “Service users can visit eir.ie/support/webmail to learn more.” Further information provided on the support section of the eir website reveals that all email accounts will be deleted automatically by eir if users do not sign up for the new payment solution. After a 60-day period, existing emails will be deleted from an account once it is deleted and eir is encouraging users to move all data they wish to continue to access before that happens. Emails cannot be redirected to a new email address if a user avails of an email service from another provider. More information is available here.