Talk with text set to become mass market - Roamware

Details: Alec Barton; Category: Consumer Ecosystems; 14 May 2006; 8695 views

Global roaming solutions specialist Roamware is combining SMS with voice communications to launch Voice SMS capability over mobile networks...

Global roaming solutions specialist Roamware is combining SMS with voice communications to launch Voice SMS capability over mobile networks. Building on the popularity of SMS, Roamware intends to enhance the power of SMS as a communications tool. Voice SMS provides a non-intrusive 'talk and listen' messaging mechanism that allows subscribers to deposit and exchange short peer-to-peer audio messages in near real time, or to deposit voice messages for convenient collection by the recipient. Traditional SMS is used both to notify the recipient and provide an access route to collect the voice message.

The service will appeal to users who are more likely to use messaging services than conduct real time conversations. Voice SMS is claimed to provide the best of both worlds: "more cost-effective and discreet than voicemail, and more expressive than SMS."

Voice message deposit and retrieval are aided by multilingual IVR prompts. Sent and received Voice SMS messages can be stored and repeatedly retrieved by subscribers, who can play, pause, and delete messages, as well as linking together all messages in the same 'conversation.'

* Founded in 2001, Roamware services more than 200 networks across 85 countries and more than 520 million mobile consumers.

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