Microsoft Lifts Cap On Msn Microsoft Network Passes On-Line Subscriber Target

Microsoft Corp. has signed up more than half a million subscribers for its new on-line service but won’t put a cap on new enrollees, reversing an earlier plan, the company said Monday.

Company officials said they have signed up 525,000 customers in the last three months for The Microsoft Network.

When the service was launched in August, Microsoft said it would limit the number of initial subscribers to 500,000 because of concerns too many people would sign on before the network and billing structure were ready to handle a heavier load.

But Microsoft officials said the system’s performance has made a membership cap unnecessary.

“We’re very excited about the healthy growth rate of MSN,” said Russell Siegelman, vice president of The Microsoft Network.

Microsoft officials said numerous surveys showed positive member feedback, especially with the service’s Internet access and integration with the World Wide Web. Telephone waiting times are averaging 2-10 seconds, the company said.

Peter Krasilovsky, a senior analyst with Arlen Communications Inc. in Bethesda, Md., a new media consulting firm, said taking off the cap is good news for Microsoft.

“That is very important. With Christmas coming up and new sales, to blow the opportunity to sell to hundreds of thousands of new users of Windows 95 in the Christmas stocking would have been a major problem,” he said.

Some analysts thought the 500,000 ceiling announced when the service was launched was “to create a false sense of pent-up demand,” Krasilovsky said.

Microsoft Network, or MSN, debuted with the company’s release of its new operating system, Windows 95, in August.

CompuServe spokesman Russ Robinson called the cap “a ploy from the beginning. It was just an attempt to say, ‘you better get on quickly or you won’t get on at all.’ I think they may have been surprised by the initial response.”