LATAM Telecom

A recent article published by the New York Times (Jill Colvin, "You’ve Got Voice Mail, but Do You Care?" , April 1st, 2009) announced the demise of Voice Mail and the rise of new technology and services such as Google Voice's Voice to Text and the iPhone's Visual Voice Mail. According to the article, most people don't bother to listen to their voice mail messages and that the technology is obsolete. Interesting article but Colvin's article misses the point: most of the new services she presents as examples of technology that is replacing voice mail are actually an evolution of voice mail technology. Voice to Text, for example, which is included in Google Voice, is a voice mail message delivery mechanism that allows text transcription of voice mail messages. This means that you have to have a voice mail message to begin with. It is new technology that provides a better user interface to recover voice mail messages, precisely what Colvin points out is missing fr...

Pinky: Gee, Brain, what are we going to do tonight? Brain: The same thing we do every night, Pinky - try to take over the world! Last week Google announced that GrandCentral, acquired by Google in 2007, is now Google Voice, with new features including voicemail to text and archive and search of SMS text messages. Analysts and bloggers are divided on how this will impact voice revenues from local and international calls, but the ability to offer free Internet calls will surely be seen as a threat. When Nokia announced last month that Skype came preloaded on the N97, it incurred the displeasure of mobile operators. According to Mobiletoday.co.uk , UK operators Orange and O2 may end up refusing to stock the N97 unless Nokia eliminated the application. The incursion of Skype and Google into telecommunications adds to the mounting pressure mobile operators are facing from new players. Last year, when Apple announced it was opening up its platform to developers, they redefined the power bal...