Media group Time Warner has announced that AOL will offer its software, e-mail and other products for free to broadband users in a bid to improve its online advertising business.
AOL had up to now offered its e-mail accounts to subscription paying customers, which number 24 million around the world - mainly in the US, Britain, France and Germany.
Since 2005 Time Warner has openly pursued a strategy of developing free-access programmes - such as TV series, news and music - on AOL to compete with Yahoo and Google.
