Information from INTERNET OnLine concerning news and operation of the portal http://www.quick.cz

PRAGUE, Jan 23 (PROTEXT) - In October of last year, INTERNET OnLine, a division of ČESKÝ TELECOM a.s., and the subsidiary company M.I.A. brought their new portal www.QUICK.cz onto the market as part of their introduction of a new service for free access to the Internet. Amid strengthening competition, they managed to gain a significant position very quickly amongst the portals of other providers of free Internet connection in the Czech Republic. This is demonstrated by the growth in numbers of visits during the first two months of operation: Month No.of pages

No.of unique

No.of visitors

accessed addresses October 5.22 million 120.6 thousand 0.833 million November 6.64 million 360.2 thousand 1.253 million

The graph displays the comparison with other portals of providers of free connection using data taken from the monthly periodical iAudit of the company Taylor Nelson Sofres.

The new portal www.quick.cz also enjoyed a very high number of visits in December of last year. The number of pages accessed exceeded 6.4 million, the number of unique IP addresses increased to 459,100 and the total number of visits grew to 1.387 million. From these figures, it is clear that this portal did not experience the seasonal drop in interest in the web servers which other providers of free connection saw, ranging between 10% - 30% of normal monthly visits for the period in question. Even in December, www.QUICK.cz recorded its normal high levels of interest, therefore making it one of the group of most sought for and successful portals on our Internet market.

The reasons for this are mostly the copious amounts of content and the progressively developing graphic design. The main signs showing the success of these changes to both the structure and the content of the portal have been, above all, the frequencies of use by users of specific electronic titles in the portal and its services. The most frequently visited part of the whole portal is Qsearch - a search engine that during November of last year was equipped with a fulltext search facility that can distinguish all the complex grammatical constructions in the Czech language. A large number of users stress the importance of frequent updates of the informative content of Qnews. It was for this reason that on 1 January 2001 a service was introduced for directly sending out news information by e-mail. Current information on home news, world news, sport and finance is distributed in this way several times each day, depending on the number of new information and news items. Visitors to the portal, who are interested in this new service, can register at the address http://news.quick.cz . Qpočasi (weather) also reacted to the seasons needs and since January of this year has been offering daily, updated news on snow conditions at the address http://počasí.quick.cz.

The sections Qvtipy (jokes) and Qpohlednice (postcards) are also very popular. The postcards were particularly popular throughout the Christmas season, when, during the period from 20 December 2000 to 23 December 2000, the number of postcards sent every day was around two thousand. Users particularly appreciate the wide selection, the option to alter the text graphically themselves, which they can then attach to the postcard, and the quick and simple method for sending. For the time that postcards have existed on the portal QUICK.cz (since 18 October 2000), more than 50,000 have been sent.

An objective of the portal creators is to extend the entertainments section in the near future. In November, a new item was included in the Qhoroskopy section, which was added to with a page devoted to numerology (http://horoskopy.quick.cz). By entering date of birth and name, the user can see his or her own numerological horoscope for both the long term or that day. Every owner of Palm Pilot or Visor pocket computers or in fact any WindowsCE hardware can have Qhoroskopy, Qtv (television programme for the whole week) and Qvtipy in their pocket with the aid of AvantGO software, which is also available on the pages of the portal.

Amongst the freshest items of news is also Qinzerce (http://inzerce.quick.cz) which offers all users of the www.quick.cz portal the possibility of their own personal classified ads of the type known not only in the daily press, but also from the Internet.

Access to the portal is also prepared for owners of mobile telephones with WAP services. Even today, these people can look through some of its services (Qvtipy, Qpočasi, Qtv and Qhoroskopy). The number of these applications will continue to rise.

The success of the portal has also been strengthened significantly by the powerful advertising campaign, based on original television spots and a uniform layout for press adverts and billboards. According to independent research which is currently being carried out, awareness of the QUICK brand, for both free connection and the portal, is in both categories at its strongest at the moment, putting both products amongst the renowned and sought out internet services in the Czech Republic. Contact: PhDr. Jana Voňavková PR Manager, INTERNET OnLine ČESKÝ TELECOM, a.s.- e:tel, o.z. Thámova 11-13 186 21 Praha 8 tel: 02-71466312, email: jana.vonavkova@hq.iol.cz

Subscribers please note that material bearing the slug "PROTEXT" is not part of CTK's news service and is not to be published under the "CTK" slug. Protext is a commercial service providing distribution of press releases from clients, who are identified in the text of Protext reports and who bear full responsibility for their contents.

PROTEXT