Consumers will be asked to pay an annual subscription fee of €79 to access The Irish Times online edition, ireland.com, from June, Ms Mary Mangan, chief operating officer of ireland.com, told a digital media conference yesterday.

Ms Mangan, who has the task of making ireland.com a profitable enterprise, said consumers could also choose to pay monthly fees of €14, or a weekly fee of €7, to access ireland.com.

In a speech to the National Digital Media Conference at UCD, Ms Mangan said the lower weekly and monthly charges would enable people to get a taste for the site, which attracts 1.5 million users every month. Most of the ireland.com site will be included under the new subscription plan, including its breaking news service, archive and daily newspaper. But all web users will have free access to certain portions of the site such as its property and motors portal.

Earlier this year ireland.com introduced a subscription fee for use of its e-mail services.Ms Mangan said take-up had been very encouraging and was ahead of expectations.

Meanwhile, O2 - the pan-European mobile phone company - announced at the conference it would set up a new content platform that would encourage digital media firms to create viable business models based on selling content to mobile phone firms. The lack of interesting content available to consumers on WAP mobile handsets had been a major factor depressing the mobile phone sector.

Mr Derek Handley, product director at O2, said the platform would ultimately enable third-party providers to reach all 17.2 million O2 customers across Europe via a single connection.

The panel of speakers included: Mr Brendan Tuohy, secretary general of the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment; Ms Martina King, chief executive of Yahoo UK & Ireland; Mr Daniel Stevenson of Jupiter MMXI; and Prof Mary Lamkin, the PJ Carroll professor of marketing at UCD.