Hosted VoIP

(The following is taken from Rich Tehrani’s VoIP blog:)

At CTIA a few weeks back I heard Vonage (News - Alert) will offer a voicemail transcribing service soon but I was sworn to secrecy. As you may know, I have been writing about voicemail transcription a great deal lately. I thought I blogged a hint about this news, but to be honest I have been doing so much writing lately I can’t find it, if I did.

Anyway, I just heard from a little e-mail bird Vonage will offer voicemail transcription for $.25/voicemail. I cannot verify this cost, but I did find a link on the company’s site to Vonage Text which is a voicemail transcription service. As it turns out you need an account to get more info on how this service works and I don’t have one.

My sources tell me UT Starcom provides the technology for this solution.

In my opinion, $.25/voicemail will not fly. The value of the service is immeasurable to many traveling businesspeople however. So why is $.25 too high for something so valuable? It just seems like the wrong pricing model. I would think $4.99-$9.99/month will work better. This seems to make more sense from a psychological perspective.

Also this is business service for the most part. It would explain why a hosted PBX company like M5 has recently started offering voicemail transcription as well. Perhaps this signals Vonage pushing more into the SMB space and leaving some of the consumer marketing behind? Unlikely - but the SMB market is indeed very lucrative and the return on advertising would be higher if this is what the company chooses to do.

While we are talking about hints – a major software company will be providing software to do voicemail transcription very soon as well. I just can’t tell you who at the moment. Here are all the details I can share.

It seems like voicemail transcription has to become the killer enhanced service many of us have been talking about for over a decade. I wonder if business users will take to it as much as I have. I hope so as this concept has really improved my life.

I will be interested to know how Vonage Text works out for those trying it. Feel free to e-mail me or leave a comment.

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Rich Tehrani is President and Group Editor in Chief at TMC (News - Alert). In addition he is the Chairman of the world’s best attended VoIP event, Internet Telephony Conference & Expo.