From the spoken to the written word

FT.com has a feature on Spinvox about how voicemail may be at an end with the launch of technology that turns speach to text. The technology does not delete the original voicemail and so if the conversion to text is not always accurate you can finally listen to the message.

This is the Unified Messaging as outlined by Orange's Futurology team some five years ago. They also told of "speaking emails" where your inbox would be delivered to subscribers by the silkie voice Wildfire Siren as seen on the Annova website. Oh happy memories of rosie futures from the boom times.

The problem is that I look at my phone and see that I have a number of missed calls from those who would not leave voicemail. The other problem is do I wish to pay for the delivery of voicespam from my network and others who want to tell me of "excellent new offers". How can I profile my service so that only those on a set list are able to have voicemail converted to text and all others are left for me to access when I am ready?

It is services such as this that networks can lock in users, but the issue has to be how much will I pay for such a service? If I am already on a higher user tarrif and a committed user is it not better to give the service away free as part of my service knowing that it will lift the number of minutes I use and voice is the most profitable service for my network.