Is Voicemail Dead, Or Simply Evolving?
Sorry “symbian guru” voicemail is dead.
Until mobile service providers offer voice-to-text services included in the standard monthly fee, then voicemail is dead.
Right now there are really only two competing services, spinvox, and callwave, and neither one of them will break into the mainstream market with their current business models in time to stop the demise of voicemail in general.
Spinvox is ridiculously overpriced for anyone who’s native currency isn’t GBP, and even if it is, its still questionable if its truly affordable for the paltry number of message conversions allowed per month, and the whole concept of starting the next months service early if you go over the allotment, means that someone who receives 100 message a month, and pays for the 50 message package (as there’s no 100 message package) will effectively be paying for two years of service to cover one, or for those of us in the USA, $475 a year on top of the regular monthly fee we already pay to our mobile provider.
Callwave isn’t much better, costing $180 a year for 40 messages per month, $300 for 80 messages per month, and $600 for 200 messages per month.
At these rates, when people already pay $10-$20 per month for unlimited sms, mms and data, both services are completely out of the pricing of the casual cell phone user.
Of course, lets not forget that Grandcentral may include voicemail transcription services in the future, and its free of charge.
Either offer the service for free, or roll it into something like unlimited service for $100 / £50 per year, then maybe you’ll stand a chance at breaking into the mainstream market.
Michael - Thanks for chiming in. I’ll agree that pricing is a big issue, and point out that Alltel and I believe Vodafone, in one country or another, is currently offering speech-to-text transcription service, though I’m not familiar with the pricing. I would gladly pay an extra ~$5-10 to AT&T to have the service included, and I know several people for whom pricing with Spinvox is currently a barrier.
It’s an interesting discussion, for sure.
Michael the two main services are PhoneTag (www.phonetag.com)and SpinVox. Both companies have great transcription quality, but PhoneTag offers its service directly to customers and is half the price of SpinVox.
I’ve been using voicecloud.com and at 20 bucks a month unlimited, it’s even cheaper than phonetag
Hey Michael - I saw your Tweet, apologies for taking so long in getting back to you but really glad to see you blogged it.
Just to clarify some of those price-points:
(and excuse me while I put my SpinVox/PR fact-hat on)
Ahem…
“Alltel and Cincinnati Bell BOTH offer unlimited SpinVox conversion for $5.99 a month.
SpinVox is offered by carriers on four continents and these include big names like Telstra in Australia, Vodacom in South Africa, Vodafone Spain (er.. in Spain), Rogers Wireless, Telus and Sasktel in Canada as well as Alltel and Cincinnati Bell.”
So - ‘Ridiculously over-priced’ ?
Mail me james.whatley@spinvox.com - would be interested to have a conversation.
Cheers,
J.