Times and Sunday Time to Start Charging for Online Content

The Times and the Sunday Times are to start charging for content online in June, reports Guardian.co.uk.

Users will be charged £1 for a day's access and £2 for a week's subscription for access to both papers' websites, publisher News International has announced.

The papers will relaunch their websites in early May and will be available for a free trial period to registered users. Readers can register from today at timesplus.co.uk.

The Times and the Sunday Times are the first UK papers to fully charge for digital content. While a daily payment will give users access to both sites, the weekly subscription will also include an e-paper and new applications. Access to the digital services will be included in the seven-day subscriptions of print customers to the Times and the Sunday Times.

In August 2009, Rupert Murdoch announced that he would to introduce charges for all his newspapers, saying that News Corp wanted to prevent readers moving to free sites by making its content better and differentiated from other publishers.