Fujitsu spins off Nifty Web stuff

Infoweb, Fujitsu's ISP, is merging with Nifty Serve, the online information service of Fujitsu's Nifty Corporation subsidiary to form a new ISP called @nifty. The move combines the company's two arms of Internet involvement, which should streamline investment. Infoweb has 620,000 subscribers making it the largest ISP in Japan, where the market is worth an estimated $2.42 billion. Nifty is the country's largest online information service with its 2.73 million subscribers accounting for more that a 25 per cent market share. The new ISP will have a subscriber base of 3.5 million, making it the biggest by a huge margin. Fujitsu says that it plans to have 10 million people signed up to @nifty in five years time. ®