Is SMS replacing voicemail?

labratza said:
has anyone used this service? let me know how well it works
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There were (at least) two threads on voicemail2sms in the news section recently. I found it very usable to far.

On the question if SMS will replace voicemail, I'm not to sure if it's a relevant question.

Voicemail is typically a result of wanting to talk to someone in the first place, i.e. I called you to speak to you in person. You were not available but the connection was already established, so I left a voicemail.

SMS (and other IM's) typically indicate I intentionally did not want to speak with you but were happy with sending a text message.

So, I don't think someone is going to call me, cannot get hold of me, drop the call and then SMS me. While it might happen in some cases, for most it's just easier to leave a voice message.

To illustrate the point; how many people call the other party's voicebox directly to leave a voicemail? Very few.

So SMS is a (non real-time) IM technology while voicemail is the end-result of a unsuccessful (real-time) voice call.
 
Why is a 3x160 character sms still more expensive than a 2000 character MMS (or 1MB for data for that matter)?
 
vodacom3g said:
...On the question if SMS will replace voicemail, I'm not to sure if it's a relevant question...
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I think the actual question was really meant to be "Is Voicemail2SMS replacing voicemail?".
 
The big problem with SMS is that it is an unreliable service. There is no guarantee that a message will be delivered in a specific time span - I've had sms's taking 24 hours to be delivered.

SMS would be a goodl solution if the carriers could guarentee a maximum delivery period.
 
bekdik said:
The big problem with SMS is that it is an unreliable service. There is no guarantee that a message will be delivered in a specific time span - I've had sms's taking 24 hours to be delivered.

SMS would be a goodl solution if the carriers could guarentee a maximum delivery period.
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SMS do have a high level of reliability. As with any service, there are factors that could influence delivery time, like the receiving devices not being available on the network, etc. Handset firmware is also a big factor.

SMS uses the same channel used for setting up and managing calls (one of the factors influencing cost, BTW), so it's extremely reliable.
 
so sending a mms might be cheaper than a 3x160 sms.....
 
Email on cell phones will replace sms. If any of my contacts has a blackberry or nokia email pushmail I email them at a fraction of the cost.(I have saved R300 a month that way).
Is it me or are there too many articles out punting vodacom or raising awareness repeatedly about their products to squeeze more money their way. It's free advertising trying to start a trend. If eveyone in sa sends one sms - vodacom gets R5million. nice one
 
eaglebeaver said:
Email on cell phones will replace sms. If any of my contacts has a blackberry or nokia email pushmail I email them at a fraction of the cost.(I have saved R300 a month that way).
Is it me or are there too many articles out punting vodacom or raising awareness repeatedly about their products to squeeze more money their way. It's free advertising trying to start a trend. If eveyone in sa sends one sms - vodacom gets R5million. nice one
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SMS will probably die a natural death as the underlying bearer for IM, but this will be a function of the handsets, i.e. they'll have to support some type of IM and (most importantly) it will need to be simple and easy to use.

When SMS launched, no-one expected IM to take off in the fashion it did. On top of this it was easy to use (it's mobile to mobile, so identity management was simple) and reliable. And supported on every handset.

So until these factors can be duplicated with another system, we'll still see SMS as a dominant IM system..

@Tns; Sending 1 MMS is the same cost as 1 SMS, but you've got much more payload. I'm actually surprised people don't use it more for text as you can send so much more data in one MMS.

I use this quite a lot myself. For example, I request status information from my house via a SMS but send the response as a MMS. (Which off course does not work on my iPhone, before Rouxenator points it out....:rolleyes:)
 
All right - spanner in the works - I would think that very busy individuals rarely have the time to go through the (perceived) trouble of dialing 121, pushing buttons and then listening to your voicemail...

Surely it is easier to just read an sms? It might be unprofessional, but it certainly gets my attention a lot sooner than me listening to my voicemail only five hours later...

or am I the only one?
 
yeah i don't like voicemail bcos once i'm unreachable & my voicemail tally exceeds 5, it takes me a week to get around to listening to them. sms gets my immediate attention.
 
vodacom3g said:
SMS will probably die a natural death as the underlying bearer for IM, but this will be a function of the handsets, i.e. they'll have to support some type of IM and (most importantly) it will need to be simple and easy to use.

When SMS launched, no-one expected IM to take off in the fashion it did. On top of this it was easy to use (it's mobile to mobile, so identity management was simple) and reliable. And supported on every handset.

So until these factors can be duplicated with another system, we'll still see SMS as a dominant IM system..

@Tns; Sending 1 MMS is the same cost as 1 SMS, but you've got much more payload. I'm actually surprised people don't use it more for text as you can send so much more data in one MMS.

I use this quite a lot myself. For example, I request status information from my house via a SMS but send the response as a MMS. (Which off course does not work on my iPhone, before Rouxenator points it out....:rolleyes:)
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Agreed . Surely it wont be long before most handsets have internet capability. Most of the kids use mxit already and it wasn't long ago when only a few phones had a camera.
 
Rip off

Smooth Criminal said:
Why is a 3x160 character sms still more expensive than a 2000 character MMS (or 1MB for data for that matter)?
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Because most people use SMS *(by far) so changing the pricing downward and in line with their other services, would see a large dent in the networks income. In reality it probably costs them less than a cent to actually carry and deliver an SMS.
 
Personally I have been using the audio message feature that Nokia has a lot. Since most of my friends and family have Nokias this is very easy to use. People with other makes just view it as a normal MMS with an AMR file.

The nice thing with audio messages is that you can get up to 3 minutes for 80c (the price of a MMS). Plus you can save the file in your phone if you like and you are not using network services like the AMA stream of voicemail, only MMS.

MMS is very closely related to email so maybe they could merge sometime in the future.
 
sms might be easier to read and to use but lacks the human quality.
 
ConsiderThis said:
Has someone tried this? :p Would love to know...
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If the system miss a word it will put a holder in the relevant place in the message. Something like: "John please call me you (?)" ;)

If it can't translate the voice message at all (in Afrikaans for example), it will send you an SMS to say you got a voice message that could not be translated.

If you leave a voice message for someone with this service enabled, it will actually ask you to leave your message in English.
 
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