One of the presentations at the Innovative Systems User’s Group meeting was on the feature of receiving voicemail in one’s email box.  That there had to be a presentation on this topic in August 2007 was somewhat surprising to me. 

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MY OPINION – Every telco should have this capability and should have it bundled in someway with either their voice service or broadband service. 

I know on the surface this sort of application does not seem to have anything to do with local content, but bear with me and you will see where I envision things going. 

I admit being a bit of an early adopter of unified messaging as 6 years ago, when I started Viodi, I kluged together a system whereby I could get a voicemail box/phone number from efax for $15 per month (instead of $20 from SBC).  This voicemail box also served as my fax line.  After six rings, my AT&T landline would forward to the efax line and the resulting voicemail would be sent (in the form of wav files) to my designated email box. 

I could click on the audio link in the email and listen to my voicemail.  Since it came to my Yahoo! email, I had the voicemail backed up for as long as Yahoo! is around (they do provide infinite storage these days).  Life was good, except for some occasionally reliability problems with such a kludged set-up.

A year ago, I switched to Comcast to improve reliability, reduce overall costs and consolidate my bill payments.  The service worked fine except for a few irritants –

–          They make me log in to their web site to retrieve my messages, instead of downloading an MP3 file to my hard-drive; argggh, another click or two and another password to remember.  The frustration of this experience outweighs any benefit of me going to their web site. 

–          Internet Explorer is required.  This was the case.  In the past few weeks, Mozilla has started working. Before their service worked directly with Mozilla, I would have to open Internet Explorer and manually go to their web site. 

–          There is no tie-in between the phone and web voice center.  For instance, when I listen to a message on the web voice center, the stutter tone does not go away on the phone.  I have to delete the message on the phone, even after I have listened to it on their Web Voice Center.  Effectively, they are making me spend twice as much of my time managing phone calls as I should.  Ideally, they would give me an option to choose whether I want the stutter tone to go away after listening to it on the Web Voice Center (or visa-versa). 

–          I have not figured out how to fast forward or rewind a message when listening to it on the phone.  I am sure this is possible, but it does not use the familiar “7” and “9” delete and save protocol of my T-Mobile cell phone.

To give Comcast credit, they are improving their Web Voice Center.  Initially, they used embedded Quicktime to playback the voicemail messages.  It did not always work, however, and it was impossible to download the messages for archival purposes.  They have since upgraded to a Flash player, which is much more reliable and allows downloading of messages.  Fortunately, for Comcast, the cost in time of making a change in service providers is still greater than the annoyances of the shortcomings of their service. 

So, how does local content ties to voicemail?  First, there are the popular related applications, such as caller ID on the TV.  A potentially interesting concept I heard of at the Innovative User’s Group was using the TV to retrieve voicemails or as a call-screening device. 

Imagine another scenario where a person could narrate individual pictures or a slide show, using their telephone as an input device.   Pictures are about as personal and local as content can be.  Adding a voice component and, maybe licensed music, makes photos more compelling and more memorable.  Adding a social component, such as the ability to send the compiled program to friends and relatives via broadband or IPTV, and the telco has made for a stickier bundled service. 

If this type of service sounds ridiculous, think twice, as Time-Warner has been offering something similar for about a year at their Oceanic system using PhotoShow.  Orca Interactive and muvee just announced a similar deal for bringing photos to life over IPTV networks.  Thus, I am convinced that a good first step for any telco that wants to support next generation IPTV services is to start by moving its voicemail to email.    

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