A bit behind Rogers maybe, but Telus is now offering a visual voicemail service via SpinVox. This will let Canadians on the CDMA network of choice to read transcribed voicemail messages right on their BlackBerry, in a way similar to SimulSays. If it’s anything like Rogers’ offering, you can expect it to cost around 15$/month.
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Having tried Spinvox since Rogers announced it, I have since canceled it. This service is pretty weak, as it does not convert long messages, spells 20-30% of words wrong, and best of all every 5th or so voice mail you will get a text saying: This person left you a message, and thats it.
Although a great idea, about $3 or $4 a month would be ok, but it needs alot of work.
My 2c
I have been using this service for a few weeks now on a trial basis. I can tell you that I have had a mixed review of this feature. Like martin’s comments it misses a few words here or there and has problems understanding people with an accent. One thing I do not like is I find myself reading the message on my blackberry and not going into my actual voicemail and deleting it. If you do want to go into your voicemail the messages are marked as skipped and or you have to dial ##NN, where N is the number you got in your Spinvox email. The other thing is you never receive an icon on your blackberry to show new voicemails. I had a problem the other day with my voicemail box being full because I hadn’t gone back into the voicemail to delete messages, which I usaually do after I listen to them. Overall the feature is cool and its something you would have to get used to.
The other cool feature is it will email you the wav file of the voicemail. This great when you have access to your computer, but when you have attachments blocked on your BES you can’t play them anyway.
I would call this feature speech-to-text and not visual voicemail. When you use that term I think of the iPhone or Avaya’s visaul voice system which are true visual voicemail. its been interesting using this feature for a few weeks but I don’t think I would pay more then a few dollars for it.