Voicemail and email make beast with two callbacks

Back to the article

Paul

Vodafone already do this #

Posted Thursday 17th July 2008 09:56 GMT

it's called 242...

Jon Press

Not free, yet not revenue-generating. #

Posted Thursday 17th July 2008 10:10 GMT

My mobile phone provider excludes call diversion from its inclusive minutes, so the user of this service would presumably be charged real money for the call - money which would go to the network operator. On the other hand, the operator of the voicemail service would receive no revenue. I'm not sure how this company intends to make money when it is simply increasing the income of the companies with whom it is supposedly in competition.

And if you want to synchronize your contacts ("coming later") try Mobical. They've been doing it for years now and still haven't been able to profit from it except as a way of testing a large number of devices against software they also sell commercially.

Mark W

O2 Already do this #

Posted Thursday 17th July 2008 10:18 GMT

It's called Visual Voicemail on the iPhone :)

(Sorry - couldn't resist. I'll grab my non-3G coat... ;) )

Graham Wood

@Jon Press #

Posted Thursday 17th July 2008 10:35 GMT

The idea of getting a large user base for your code, and then using the stable version generated to make money is a known one.

Anyone using Fedora is doing exactly that for Redhat - so it seems to work.

Tim J

@Jon Press #

Posted Thursday 17th July 2008 10:37 GMT

But Inniu may well be making money from the incoming (diverted) calls as they could have things arranged so that they receive at least part of the network termination charge - voila, they have a business model (of sorts!).

Whether their product works out for you seems to be pretty dependent upon whether your price plan lets you use your inclusive minutes for call diversion - if not, you're paying for every second someone leaves you a long and laborious voicemail message! Of course the ability to have said messages delivered by email might suit your needs. I'm happy with old fashioned voicemail, but maybe I'm just complacent!

Anonymous Coward

Xoip? #

Posted Thursday 17th July 2008 10:37 GMT

http://www.xoip.com/

Steve

0709 numbers #

Posted Thursday 17th July 2008 11:12 GMT

Get yourself a forwarding number (for free), like the service from YAC.

The people calling you have to pay more for the call, you don't pay anything, the number can forward to a mobile or landline or multiple cascading numbers and finally if it goes to voicemail you get it emailed to you, all free of charge - for you.

Jon Press

@@Jon Press (there's no problem that can't be solved by more indirection) #

Posted Thursday 17th July 2008 11:15 GMT

@Graham Wood

Yes, but RedHat have a commercial product that they resell. Inniu appears to want to make money from selling the service, not the code. I doubt they could sell the code: Asterisk and a bit of scripting would seem to fit the bill for anyone with a similar technical requirement on an in-house scale.

@Tim J

In order for Innu uto make any money out of termination charges they'd either have to use a non-geographic number (which would further reduce the number of people who can access the service within their inclusive minutes) or be big enough to strike a deal with a major telecomms outfit.

That's not to say there isn't a use for a service like this - I set something up personally for my own phone only to be stymied when changing network contracts because of the "inclusive minutes" issue. But if there's money to be made, be sure the network operators will have it.

Jon Press

Actually, let me take part of that that back... #

Posted Thursday 17th July 2008 11:31 GMT

After a bit more delving on their website it does seem that they have a product for telcos which means that they're aiming a bit higher than the "in house" market, so maybe they can use the service as a kind of mass beta-test for a commercial platform....

Andy Watt

Visual Voicemail? #

Posted Thursday 17th July 2008 12:56 GMT

I don't have an iPhone, but isn't voicemail on the iPhone itself? Thus... not O2? Given their recent performance for the 3G iPhone rollout, I wouldn't trust 'em to take my calls... they'd probably use a worn-out post-it (which they had, of course, thoroughly tested before use)

Paris, becuase even she needs o2 sometimes

Anonymous Coward

@Jon Press #

Posted Thursday 17th July 2008 15:37 GMT

RedHat don't sell a product. The product, RHEL, is actually free, if you know where to get it, what they actually sell is the support contract for said product.

Anonymous Coward

seriously? #

Posted Thursday 17th July 2008 18:26 GMT

yes that's right just have my email password to do with as you please...

seriously? how did they get VC for this - "oooo look technology-shiny. voicemail-good. email-good. money-now"

I'm surprised they didn't integrate these messages with the social networking site du jour to further the VC wanderlust at the prospect of some brain dead investment house valuation.

Seriously give me 100K and a couple of months with some guys in poland or china and i'll deliver the same thing.

There is little real revenue from this but if we have learned anything from skype - people are dumb.

Rich