Kathmandu, December 24:

Microsoft has launched a free-hosted email service from Windows Live to academic institutions of the country. The institutions themselves can select custom domain names.

The new email service ‘Microsoft Live@edu’ will be provided for free to any academic institution through Microsoft, Market Development Partner (MDP), Nepal. Once an academic institution gets a domain, it can have many sub-domains or accounts under the same domain. Students can also access this service. For example, a student can have a domain addressed ‘ramesh@cambridge.edu.np’

Microsoft will provide 5 GB of storage per account, instant messenger, Office Live Workplace, video and photo-sharing facility, online group study, file sharing, Windows Live mobile alert and many more facilities useful for the academic institutions.

Deepak Dhakal, technical support, Microsoft MDP, said this is the most advanced and practical way of providing online communications in academic institutions, which will help strengthen the interpersonal skills between teachers and students, share information and perform group activities. It will also help institutions have their own domains. “Such services have been affordable for business communities only. This programme is being launched for the benefit of academic institutions, which cannot afford such an expensive technology,” he said. The programme was officially launched in the first week of December, and the MDP aims to provide such service to 500 academic institutions in the initial phase.