Hotmail, the world's largest web-based e-mail service, cannot yet open up its service to mobile phone users, because many wireless operators do not have the right billing software, Microsoft said Friday. Microsoft, which owns Hotmail and runs it as part of its Internet services unit MSN, said in August it wanted to give its 30 million European Hotmail users the opportunity to receive selected e-mail via strings of text messages. Although the service has been trialed successfully in Denmark and Switzerland and will be rolled out commercially there early in the new year, Microsoft will have to wait for wireless operators elsewhere to install new billing software.
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