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Mar.12

12:25 PM ET

Monday, 12 Mar 2007

The End of Voicemail As We Know It

Topics:Technology

Sectors:Technology

Kevork Djansezian / AP
A new service is offering voicemails in text form on your Blackberry.
Tired of listening to that automated voice on your phone's message menu? Now you can get your voicemails in text form on your Blackberry. CNBC's Jane Wells found a new service that wants to end voicemail as we know it.

"We feel that the market for voicemail in the United States is about thirty to forty billion messages per month," James Siminoff, CEO of Simulscribe, said on "Morning Call." His company has developed technology that turns voicemails into e-mail. The voice recognition software's benefits include time-savings, the ability to see all your messages at once, and freedom from having to jot down numbers. The cost: $10 a month for the first forty messages; after that, each message costs 25 cents.

British company Spinvox offers a similar service and will offer its services free in the U.S. for one year. More traditional answering services, such as phonewire.com, use live operators who transcribe voicemails into text. "Every telephone has voicemail, and I believe in the next ten to fifteen years every phone is going to have this particular solution," said Matt Rygelski, President of phonewire.com

While more and more companies are trying to cash in on simplifying this task, these services still allow users to access their voicemail the old fashioned way--in case they miss the sound of that automated voice.