Puerto Rican mobile operator Open Mobile has announced a Visual Voicemail (VVM) service. Created by Movius Interactive Corporation, the service pushes voicemail information to subscribers mobiles by SMS.
The Movius VVM service is pretty basic as they go. While most VVM services will actually transcribe a voice message and present it to the user in text form, this one only sends information about the text. Whenever a voicemail is left, the subscriber will receive a text with the name and number of the sender, the time it was left and the length of the message. The SMS also includes a click-to-listen link.
From the release:
“With MessageMe Plus, users with any model mobile phone can now have an enhanced voicemail experience without the cost of an expensive handset or smartphone,” says Keith Bhatia, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales at Movius Interactive Corporation. “As carriers are looking to increase their customer base, applications that enable providers to attract new customers, encourage customer loyalty and help reduce churn are essential. We are delighted that Open Mobile has chosen MessageMe Plus to do this.”
Frank Bell, President and COO at Open Mobile, explains, “Our customers in Puerto Rico are very progressive and always interested in new and innovative applications. We strive to provide them with the best service possible, to enhance their wireless mobile experiences and to make their lives a bit easier. MessageMe Plus provides a superior voice mail experience which we believe our customers will embrace.”
What we think?
While this service is certainly less useful than other VVM services that have been created, it’s not actually a bad service. Having all of your voicemails available for review in your SMS inbox is no bad thing. In particular, this service doesn’t require a client. Other services need to store and transcribe your voicemails, where this one simply collates already available information into SMS form. So it’s cheap for the operator, free for the consumer, and it’s actually quite useful. So I’d give this service a big thumbs up.
