Cellphone Messaging Finds Its Voice

The WSJ reports on a Singapore technology company, Bubble Motion, which has teamed up with Swedish telecommunications giant Telefon AB L.M. Ericsson, to market a messaging service that eliminates the need to tap out a text message and replaces it with voice.

It is a potentially hot product for wireless-service providers in developing countries and could make inroads in places where people haven't quite gotten the hang of tapping out text messages with their thumbs on a cellphone keypad.

...Users of the "voice SMS" service aren't trying to talk directly to the people they call. Instead they just want to send a message in the form of voice instead of text. The recipient's phone doesn't even ring for a voice SMS; the recipient is alerted with a beep and can retrieve the voice message by pressing the star key.

The technology was developed in Bangalore, India, by Sunil Coushik and his partner, who dubbed the new voice-text service "bubble talk." They describe the service as an ideal match for service providers looking for ways to use idle phone capacity."

Related technology:

-- Hey - send me a voicemail, Anita! - Why is the idea of voice messaging appealing? IT Analysis.com, looks in to the benefits of a voice messaging solution from Hey Anita, called Rapid Message Service.

emily | 7:42 AM | Technology |
The Permanent Link to this page is: http://www.textually.org/textually/archives/2005/09/010080.htm