Netcom rents cyberspace

Netcom (NETC) is beefing up its Web hosting services for small and medium-sized companies starting today, with new services that rent for $25 to $450 a month, the company said.

The "professional sites" go for $25 for 10MB of storage, an email box, and $50 a month for 15MB and five email boxes. For larger businesses, charges run from $100 to $450 a month and feature up to 350MB of storage, site-building graphics, scripts written in Sun Microsystems' Java programming language, email boxes, domain names services, analysis, and maintenance tools.

The "commercial suites" may also rent out with secure server access and electronic catalog hosting for companies interested in selling products and services from their sites, the company said.

Netcom's online business center is running the operation and has added Microsoft's FrontPage server extensions to make it easier for their business clients to remotely author their own Web sites, check spelling, and verify hypertext links. The tools will also let users maintain their site's page and company email.