GotVoice have gone live with it’s next-generation voicemail transcription service, “G2″, this week. The service is to be made available shortly to existing GotVoice subscribers — plus the company’s customers.

G2 wasn’t knocked up in a few minutes. It’s carrier-grade, scalable and plug’n'playable into carrier networks as required. GotVoice are offering integration via API, white label and hosted solutions and they’re clearly looking for carriers and organisations with large subscriber bases to work with.

It sounds more or less identical to SpinVox’s voice-to-text service; G2 delivers voicemails via both text (email/sms) and audio files. There are a few notable differences, including the unlimited archival of all voicemails on GotVoice.com and unlimited custom voicemail greetings. I like the idea of being able to login and query my voicemails from anywhere on the planet. The pricing also looks pretty competitive. Here’s the $9.95/month deal:

40 Voicemails converted to text per month
Overages of $0.25/voicemail (turned off as default)
Unlimited MP3’s of your voicemails sent to email
Unlimited Archive of your voicemails on GotVoice.com
Unlimited Custom Voicemail Greetings
200 Outbound Broadcast & Silent Delivery calls per month
GotVoice Premium is only $9.95 per month after the 14 Day Free trial.

I tried signing up and the form is configured for US numbers only, ergo I infer that it’s a US-only service at the moment, though I imagine it wouldn’t take much to connect the service to work for the UK and beyond.

GotVoice got $3m first round funding in late 2006. One to add to the watch list.

I think my eyesight was going nuts yesterday when I wrote the post on RebTel. I checked my account rates and saw it was what looked like 8 pence per minute. Not bad, I thought. Bit steep but, you know, not bad for the service level, especially when I can use my inclusive unlimited landline minutes.

Then I had a note this morning from Mira at RebTel (she posted a comment) to let me know that it’s actually 0.8 pence per minute.

Right. Bit of a difference, then!

A rather good deal…

After a lot of digging, I managed to find the right page to work out the costs of calling abroad from your UK Vodafone.

It’s like having a flash back to 1997.

125 pence a minute to call the States from a standard Vodafone connection. More than a quid a minute!

Buy the 2.50/month international call saver option — something I briefly considered — and you’ll only pay 25p a minute to America.

I reckon that’s far too high a premium nowadays.

It’s 30p a minute to call the States from a 3UK handset. No international caller option required. That’s .. well, it’s better than 125p.

How do you dial internationally from your handset? Or don’t you bother?

A while ago I thought I should take another look at RebTel. They got $20m worth of investment, after all (see RedHerring funding announcement). I wondered how they were doing.

Armed with a new mobile number and, effectively, a new identity, I signed-up the other day when I needed to talk to a few people abroad and was a bit nervous about using my Vodafone account to make super-dooper expensive international calls (in truth, I need to go and see how much they charge — see my next post).

It was a piece of simplicity to sign-up. Really easy. Within seconds I was using the $10 starter credit I got as a bonus for signing up to call people around the world — and, GENIUS, using an 0207 number to do so — so it’s covered in my unlimited landline service plan package with Vodafone.

I really like how RebTel handle things. Online, you just type in your friend’s phone number and select the country. RebTel then allocates that number an 0207 direct dial number. When *I* call that number from my handset, RebTel connects me immediately to my friend — and, the call is generally free if my friend hangs up and and redials with their own RebTel local access number. If they don’t, and often I’m calling people who don’t necessarily count as friends and who wouldn’t be that interested in setting up a RebTel account, so in that case, I just pay the reasonably good rates (0.8p/min to the USA from the UK). [Got the rate wrong… I thought it was 8p a minute, it’s actually POINT 8 pence, i.e. 0.8p/min) If I shop around, I could get a cheaper rate, I’m sure. The simplicity of storing my friend’s number in my phone book and calling it is worth a lot to me though.

You can setup friend phone numbers easily online, by SMS or by http://mobile.rebtel.com/ from most mobile browsers. Nice.

The audio was clear and entirely usable to the various countries I was calling (USA, Europe). I immediately added a load of cash to the balance and started calling more people.

If you haven’t looked at RebTel recently, I reckon you should — www.rebtel.com.

The writing’s been on the wall for quite a while….

Link: webitpr | Mobile voice volume will overtake fixed in Western Europe by mid-year; Analysys predicts telecoms milestone

For the first time, the volume of mobile voice calls will exceed that on traditional fixed networks in Western Europe as a whole, says Analysys, global advisor on telecoms, IT and media (www.analysys.com), ahead of the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, 11-14 February.

Analysys Research expects this milestone to take occur by the end of summer this year.

The FCC’s 700MHz frequency auction is in full swing, and hit an important milestone today. The “C” block, the one everyone wants, finally reached the reserve price of US$4.6 billion. This triggers the requirement that whoever wins this particular block of airwaves is required to operate it ‘open’, allowing any compatible device to access it. If this reserve had not been reached, the FCC would have re-auctioned the “C” block again, without the open access stipulation, paving the way for more closed systems in the U.S. It’s a very good thing that this did not happen.

The FCC is keeping all bids anonymous until after the auction is closed, so we’re not sure who placed the US$4.7 billion bid, but we do know that Verizon, AT&T, and Google were among the bidders most interested in this block of the 700MHz frequency.

Congratulations to the team at Kadoink — they’ve just knocked back $7m worth of funding.
Link:

Kadoink Announces $7M Series A Funding with Sutter Hill Ventures
Kadoink, a web telephony service for social media that enables enhanced group communication and mass distribution of SMS, live and recorded voice messaging and audio file streams over the voice channel, has closed $7 million in financing with Sutter Hill Ventures.

The funding comes after a successful unveiling of Kadoink’s powerful communications platform that bridges the mobile phone and the web, allowing consumers to connect, share and publish content with friends and online communities through their phones. Kadoink has initially deployed its technology with such brands and properties as Bebo, Adidas, Zomba Records, a soon to be announced sports broadcaster and artists such as Death Cab for Cutie, Jordin Sparks and Third Eye Blind.

They’re doing some pretty spiffy things although I don’t think I know enough people here in the States who I can phone at 1am in the morning to check it out. If you fancy giving it a go with me, knock me an email.
Here’s the overview from their About section:

Here at Kadoink HQ, we do one thing: Make your social life more mobile.

Why? Because you connect in the real world and you hang-out online in social networks, virtual environments, blogs and more. So, we saw the need to help you put it all together on the device you always have handy – your mobile phone.

To do that, Kadoink turns you and your friends’ phone from a one-to-one communication device into a social networking machine. We let you make instant group calls and group text messages, share music, jokes or any audio – and much more. Do this with friends online, using our widgets in your favorite social spots or right from your phone! Learn more..

Spinvox recently put together a list of the top ten most annoying voicemails that people get. Its funny that most of these are common occurences, at least in my experience. Here’s the list:

1. The Marathon Message - The extremely long voicemail that never ends.
2. The Death March - Leaving a phone number at the end of a long voicemail. If you missed it, you now have to listen through the entire message just to get the phone number.
3. The Screaming Eagle - The voicemail left in a noisy bar or as a fire truck is passing by
4. The Drunken Dispatch - The classic drunk-dial voicemail
5. Voicemail Interrupted - As the person is leaving the voicemail, they stop in the middle to have a conversation with someone else or answer another call before they return to finish the message.
6. The Misguided Message - A person or telemarketer leaves a message for you that was actually intended for someone else.
7. Voicemail Incognito - The anonymous voicemail, where the caller assumes you can identify their voice
8. The Dehydrated Dispatch - Any voicemail left by someone with a bad hangover.
9. One Way Wonder - When the person thinks they are speaking to you when they are actually talking to your voicemail
10. The Pocket Dialer - The person that accidentally calls you because the phone is in their pocket or purse and isn’t key-locked, leading to an endless soundtrack of them walking down the street, driving, or having a conversation with someone else.

Surely you’ve encountered at least a few of these infamous voicemails. Personally, I actually disabled voicemail on my cellphone for the past few months, and it’s been phenomenal. I don’t have to bother dialling in to retrieve a message from someone saying “Hey, it’s John, call me when you get this” when I can just look at my caller ID to see that John called.

At Nokia World, Ricky Cadden, Symbian-Guru used Spinvox to update his Jaiku and provide his readers with live updates from the event. For CES 2008, his place is taken by Laura-Jane “L-J” Rich, a UK-based TV presenter and technology journalist to provide live coverage, courtesy of Spinvox.

Laura-Jane will be using Spinvox’s “Spin-My-Blog” product to update her readers throughout the day, simply by speaking into her mobile phone. Spinvox uses speech-to-text technology to allow users to call in blog posts and social networking updates, and also features an awesome voicemail solution that allows you to receive your voicemails as an SMS text message.

You can follow Laura-Jane’s coverage on her blog here, or just get more information on who she is here.

Link: BBC caps call costs at 15p as contests return after scandals | Media | The Guardian

The BBC is to introduce a cap on the cost of calling premium phone lines as it prepares to reintroduce two of its most popular competitions, it announced yesterday.

From this week, calls to BBC programmes using premium call lines will be capped at 15p, though exceptions will be granted to shows directly related to a charity appeal, such as Children in Need.

This makes a lot of sense I think. I’m pleased to see the BBC re-introducing interactive competitions via phone and I think the 15p cap will be reasonably well received from the public.

Setting aside the obvious cost implications, I wonder what the difference would be in take-up if the BBC introduced 0800 free calls for their competitions, instead of premium rate? 10% increase? 50%?

I’ve had this article on InformationWeek starred in my Google Reader for a while now, and wanted to post some commentary on it. I absolutely *hate* when people ask this question. “Are cellphones replacing landlines?” Um, yes, of course.

I mean, seriously, is this even still a valid question? I’ve not had a landline number since I moved out of my parents’ house. Even then, none of my friends had that number. I’ve used my cellphone exclusively since I got it. That’s *why* I got it, isn’t it?

The article goes on to list the reasons why cellphones are more popular than landlines and such.

I’d like to pose this question: Other than pure laziness in cancelling it, or the fact that your DSL provider requires it, how many SMStextnews readers even HAVE a landline anymore? Do you actually USE it?

The question then becomes, why in the heck are we paying so much for our mobiles? Why will $40 in the U.S. only get you ~450 minutes in the daytime, albeit with unlimited nights and weekends on your mobile, when you can get unlimited landline service for $20-30?

It might be a stretch, but Google has introduced new Bots for its Google Talk service that will automatically translate IM conversations on the fly. For it to work, both chatters must add the appropriate bot to the conversation, and off it goes. For instance, if I wanted to chat with someone in Germany, I would add the German-to-English bot, and they would add the English-to-German bot, and we would then chat as normal, with the bots making it all easy cheesy.

This got me thinking about the possibility of an application that could do this through your phone (or over Skype or some other VOIP application). What if you could call someone in a foreign country and chat with them as if you were both chatting in your native tongue?

I don’t know how far off this is, but if it’s in IM, surely it can’t be too much more difficult or far off to add a text-to-speech feature, and then a speech-to-text on the other end, and then make all that happen directly on the handset, with a translator in the middle.

Things like this would really make VOIP something exciting, in my opinion, but there’s also other entertainment values as well. Think women speaking in foreign languages are hot? Does your wife nag you all the time on the phone? Next time she calls, why not switch her into French? It’s not like she expects you to remember what she’s said anyways, and at least then it’s a pleasureable conversation for you.

Any other great business opportunities you can think of with this?

Much of the United Kingdom came to a halt last night with when wicked television presenter, Dermot O’Leary uttered the buttock-freezing line, “And the winner is…..” as the wide angle camera zoomed slowly into a lone stage featuring finalists Leon and Rhydian awaiting their fate.

Prior to that, tons and tons of Rhydian fans had been doing what I spent most of the week doing — getting a busy signal. They were calling to cast their X-Factor vote; I was calling to get the password for my Fasthosts account (It arrived, finally, in the post).

A subset of Rhydian fans are apoplectic. They were getting busy signals when they were calling.

Our nations youngsters are intolerant of technical failure, an issue that the telecommunications companies involved would do well to remember.

These fans were past being annoyed. They didn’t hang up and say to themselves, ‘Ah well, it’s busy…’ — they collectively burned themselves into a fury, that, within minutes of Rhydian not winning, they were urging each other to email mainstream news outlets touting foul-play.

One such news outlet, The London Telegraph, attuned to the connected generation, picked up the story — as have many others.

It’s fascinating that what was obviously some degree of technical failure, somewhere in the telecoms chain, is immediately cast as foul-play by the young fans of X-Factor. What else could it be? A busy signal. Of course not. A telecoms company asleep at the wheel on Saturday night? Of course not. This generation simply does not accept that their landline telecoms services are infallible. Their expectation is such that they should always be connected wherever and whenever they call, especially to a competition as large as X-Factor.

Obviously 999 emergency services will have stayed up and available during the show along with other ‘carrier grade’ critical services. I’m pretty confident of that. What’s fascinating to behold is that whilst you’ve got the telecoms operators moving heaven and earth to make sure that their traditional services all stay operational, the allowed their consumer landline service to X-Factor to degrade-to-busy — wherever it was in the chain from the house to operator to aggregator to X-Factor technical supplier.

The busy signal in this context is an advertisement for apathy. Those busy signals might as well have been replaced with a recorded message thus:

The number your are calling is busy. Your telecoms operator doesn’t care and couldn’t be arsed to take a whopping percentage of your voting revenue at this time. Please f*ck right off and maybe make a few calls outside your minutes plan or something. It’s the weekend. We don’t care. Our Network Operations Centre ain’t bothered and is too busy watching X-Factor to be arsed about provisioning extra service to take money from you. Later.

What idiot telecoms CEO is allowed to go home at 5pm on Friday night without MAKING SURE that every call to X-Factor gets through? It AIN’T DIFFICULT. It’s stupidly easy money, too. All you do is play a recorded ‘thank you’ and whack 35p per minute to the caller’s bill.

Every call should be answered.

But we’ll leave that issue there, now, I think.

Here’s the story from the Telegraph:

Link: X Factor fans complain over phone-in votes - Telegraph

Fans of Welsh baritone Rhydian Roberts claim he was robbed of the X Factor crown last night because the talent show’s voting lines were constantly engaged.

The ITV1 programme’s message board and Rhydian Roberts fansites have today been inundated with complaints from fans claiming they could not get through to register their vote.

SMS Text News sponsor, MAXroam has signed a strategic alliance deal with Global Romaing Inc. (www.celtrek.com). The deal combines the marketing reach and technical know-how of both companies into a single partnership.

It’ll enable both companies to offer offer extended geographic coverage and data roaming on their existing products. This is a substantial step forward for both companies in their goal to provide a single global communication platform that brings an end to the monopolistic behavior of the large cellular operators. Bring it on — particularly the data roaming part. That’ll be brilliant.

Pat Phelan, top chap at MAXroam commented on the deal: “I am delighted that Global Roaming has decided to partner with Cubic [MAXroam] and I look forward to a world where anyone can call anyone at anytime without worrying about the cost.”

Me too. It’s more or less there with MAXroam. Speaking of which, I shall be announcing my SMS Text News local US number soon!

I had a note in from Vodafone UK today to tell me about their new partnership with Lebara Mobile.

Lebara is a mobile MVNO aimed at permanently based UK immigrants and migrant workers in the UK who want to use their mobile to (primarily) call overseas. Right now, if you grab a Vodafone pay as you go sim from the local store, you’ll be knocked for a ton of cash to call abroad — but not if you get yourself a Lebara sim.

Unlike other MVNO announcements recently (I’m looking at you, Extreme Mobile), I think Lebara’s concept is smart — there is, I reckon, substantial demand from certain segments of the population for this kind of service.

Here are the details of the announcement:

Vodafone UK today announces a new MVNO partnership with Lebara Mobile as part of its wholesale strategy. Lebara Mobile is an MVNO that will provide a competitive way for permanently based immigrants in the UK, and migrant visitors and workers to the UK, to use their mobiles to call overseas.

This SIM-only pre-pay offer will be provided to customers under the Lebara brand, available through a mixture of outlets central to the migrant community. Customers will be supported by own language customer service before and after the purchase.

Tim Stone, director of new business development and wholesale at Vodafone UK, said: “We are delighted that Lebara Mobile is launching today. In March we set out the Vodafone UK strategy to drive revenue growth and, as part of this, our ambitions to grow our wholesale market share. We are very pleased to be working with Lebara Mobile which has proven experience of delivering successful services to the migrant market – a very sizeable market in the UK worth in the region of £500million. We are pleased to be the partner of choice for Lebara Mobile and look forward to reaching this exciting new market in the UK.”

“We are delighted to be working with Vodafone as our key strategic partner for the UK launch of Lebara Mobile. The Vodafone network allows us to offer our customers over 99% call coverage in the UK and allows our customers to make high quality international and national mobile phones calls.” Robert Gaskin, Lebara Mobile UK country manager.

The announcement builds on the agreements made this summer with Asda to deliver a new MVNO ‘Asda mobile’, with TomTom to deliver real-time traffic information to drivers, and more recently with The Carphone Warehouse as MVNO partner for ‘TalkMobile’. All of these partnerships, reflect Vodafone UK’s position as the wholesale strategic partner of choice.

Link: Qantas extends test of in-flight cellphone use

The Qantas trial has only allowed SMS text messages and e-mails - which is a great compromise. Weary jet-setters won’t have to worry about that annoying loud-talker taking the seat next to them. It looks like the rest of the world is set to allow in-flight mobile phone use of some sort.

Fantastic. I really like the concept of being able to send/receive text messages and email — when I want it, in the air. But I reaaaaally don’t want to listen to ‘I’m on the plane’ phone calls at ALL.

Interestingly, how many times have you witnessed someone use a Skyphone? You know many planes have them installed in seats already — but they’re a) very expensive and b) taboo — that is, I’ve never ever seen anyone use one! Have you?

Mobile messaging services provider TynTec has just launched a new service which will allow major telecoms carriers to route voice calls to mobile phones directly to their destination network operator.

The new service, called Voice Network Query, will overcome the issue of onward routing of voice calls to ported mobile numbers, thus reducing the issue of excess network traffic generated by voice calls misrouted due to mobile number portability.

When a mobile user switches network but retains their current phone number, calls have traditionally been routed via the user’s former operator’s infrastructure, which then routes calls to the operator which now provides service to the customer.  This double handling of calls generates additional network traffic and transmission costs which, ultimately, are passed on to subscribers. With TynTec’s Voice Network Query, TynTec customers can check the actual network of a mobile number before routing the call, thus routing the voice call directly to the correct network and avoiding unnecessary network traffic.

TynTec is able to offer this unique service through its portfolio of deep-level (SS7) connections into the global mobile network.  Using their access directly into mobile operators, TynTec can query any mobile number to establish its home network, whichever operator that number might have originated on.

Michael Kowalzik, CEO, TynTec, said: “Mobile Number Portability is a great thing for consumers but has caused huge amounts of problems in the routing of voice calls and lack of tariff transparency for the subscriber.  Because mobile numbers are attached to a particular operator, when that number is ported onto a customer’s new operator, the routing process can become hugely complex.

“Voice Network Query overcomes that problem with a simple and elegant solution – by ‘asking’ the phone what network its sitting on before routing the call it’s possible to connect directly to the right network without the hassle and cost of unnecessary connections through intermediary operators.”

The SpinVox world domination plans continue, with the news that they’ve launched their rather useful voicemail-to-SMS service in South Africa.

The deal, with leading mobile network Vodacom, will be branded in the country as Voicemail2SMS.  “SpinVox is a powerful messaging service that saves customers time by eliminating the need to listen to traditional voicemail,” says Christina Domecq, CEO and co-founder, SpinVox. “We’re proud to be making SpinVox available in Africa for the first time and believe that customers will find it a simple and easy, yet immensely valuable way of controlling and improving daily communications.”

“Our experience in delivering the SpinVox service means we are confident that South African consumers and business people alike will soon find SpinVox an essential tool for helping them get the most out of their busy lives and derive even more value from Vodacom’s infrastructure right across the country,” continued Domecq.

So where’s SpinVox heading next? Word on the street is they’re going down under - although there’s no precise news on dates and partners as yet.

Avaya and Nokia today announced the next phase of their strategic collaboration with a solution that provides users of Nokia Eseries business devices with one number access and advanced enterprise telephony capabilities as they travel across private Wi-Fi and public mobile networks. With a single mobile device, workers can “handoff” phone calls at the click of a button, using dual mode communications, as they travel from inside a company building (Wi-Fi) to the outside environment (mobile) – and vice versa.  This gives workers a more convenient and productive way to manage their communications, while giving organisations a more cost-effective approach to enterprise mobility.

The solution – Avaya one-X Mobile Dual Mode Edition – combines Internet protocol (IP)-based applications with Nokia Eseries business devices – the Nokia E60, Nokia E61 and Nokia E70 models – to deliver the full benefits of FMC. The offering includes a dual-mode device with Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) capabilities that can make and receive calls over both mobile and wireless local area networks (WLAN), both on and off a company campus.For example: when a worker is communicating while roaming inside company walls, the solution uses the company’s communications system and a secure Wi-Fi network. This drives cost savings by eliminating the need to use cellular minutes while at work. When the worker travels outside a company’s Wi-Fi network, they can handoff their Wi-Fi call to the cellular network outside by pressing a button, keeping their conversation going uninterrupted.
An organisation that is using Avaya mobility solutions to keep employees connected wherever they go is CNIPA, the Italian National Centre for Information Technologies in Public Administration.

“We recently planned to introduce VoIP technologies which would see the migration of a million desk phones to IP mode over three years,” said Stefano Paolucci, CNIPA CIO manager, the Italian National Centre for Information Technologies in Public Administration. “We are enthusiastic about the possibility of collaborating with Avaya to provide access to mobility services in our headquarters in Rome.  With an easy and quick installation system we are currently using WLAN and GSM dual-mode technologies to provide mobile access to PBX services such as call transfer, call registration and conference calls. Despite the complexity of our building – Mr. Paolucci continues - the communication through the continuous coverage of the Wi-fi network  is secured thanks to the various access points located on all floors and the connection from one point to another does not cause any sort of interference during the conversation. Not only has this resulted in increased mobility, but we have also reduced costs.”

“We’re finding that more and more businesses are using mobile devices in their telephony evolution cycle to deal with an increasingly virtual workforce,” said Nathan Dyer, Yankee Group senior analyst, Enterprise Mobility. “Apart from cost-savings, integrated Wi-Fi and cellular devices enable simplified management and greater enterprise control over wireless voice devices.”

Avaya one-X Mobile Edition and Nokia Eseries business devices deliver greater convenience, enhanced functionality, and improved security by giving workers one device for business and personal use, one number call access, and one voicemail message interface. Enterprise telephony features available with the dual mode solution include conferencing, transfer, and extension dialing – key capabilities enabling more productive communications for mobile workers. Security benefits include the ability to authenticate the Nokia Eseries device to a PBX, giving businesses greater control over wireless communications by allowing only authorised users to access the company’s systems.

“Bringing the functionality of the IP PBX to mobile devices over cellular and Wi-Fi to employees both inside and outside the office is one of the ways mobility is transforming the way business is done,” said Tom Furlong, vice president, Security & Mobile Connectivity, Nokia. “Working with a leading IP telephony provider like Avaya to extend their solutions to Nokia Eseries business devices is a key element to realizing the Nokia vision of connecting people using virtually any device over any network to any corporate application or data source.”

“Embedding Avaya mobility applications with Nokia dual mode technology represents a core part of Avaya’s vision of delivering Intelligent Communications to every worker, regardless of the network they’re on,” said Geoffrey Baird, Avaya vice president and general manager of Appliances, Mobile and Small Systems Division.  “This unifies a business’ voice applications, devices and networks to simplify communications for enterprise users wherever they go.  Greater productivity and savings are just the beginning of the benefits gained with dual mode mobility.”

Avaya will sell the mobile application as part of its IP telephony portfolio through its enterprise channels; Nokia will sell the solution through its operator and other channels. Both companies are investing research, development and marketing resources to realise the enterprise fixed mobile convergence market.

Link: SpinVox Inks Contract With Vodafone Network In Spain - Quick Facts

News just in.. Hot on the heels of their deal last week to bring voice-to-screen messaging to Canada, SpinVox has just announced it’s signed a deal with Vodafone Spain.

More details soon!

Voice to text provider SpinVox have signed a deal with mobile and landline operator SaskTel to bring their voicemail to SMS service to Canada.

Available on both the SaskTel cellular network and SaskTel’s wireline telephone network, Voice Mail to Text service automatically converts voicemail messages to text and sends the text message to the recipient for viewing on a computer, a cellular phone or another wireless device. The service is available for $25 per month for unlimited messages, $10 per month for up to 40 messages or 40 cents per message on a pay per use basis.

“Voice Mail to Text is a revolutionary service and we’re proud to be the first provider in Canada to offer it to our customers,” SaskTel President and CEO Robert Watson said. “These new technologies provide customers with incredible new flexibility and convenience when dealing with their voicemail.”

“Voice driven messaging is about to explode around the globe,” said Christina Domecq, Co-founder and CEO of SpinVox. “SpinVox was the first to create the service and SaskTel is the first in Canada to offer it.  We believe voice messaging greatly enhances your ability to communicate effectively with the people you interact with on a daily basis – and that’s why we’re both in business.”

There is something rather exciting to behold when you hit ‘Start Conference –> Now’ in the ROK Talk application…

Especially when you’re calling 11 people simultaneously.

Thrice especially, when you’re in the same room as the other 11 people.

Heh. Everyone’s phone rings at the *same* time, I love it!

RING ring RING ringring RING ring HELLO ring HELLO? ringring RING!

I demonstrated the service to a load of people at the weekend and I think they were all suitably impressed. ROK Talk are releasing more accounts so if you haven’t yet tried it out (or applied for a beta test) do so at roktalk.com.

ROK Entertainment Group, the specialist mobile technology and applications developer, today announced ROK Talk, its new and wholly unique mobile conference-calling application, with an invitation for 500 people worldwide to join a BETA trial.

ROK Talk enables simple and affordable group calling, all managed directly from the user’s mobile phone. In just a few seconds, subscribers an instantly create or schedule conference calls with up to 30 people simultaneously using the familiar ‘contacts’ list already on their handset.

The ROK Talk solution manages invitations and introductions on the users behalf, and even allows in-call control of the conference directly from the handset - a first in the industry. Call costs are substantially lower than traditional conferencing solutions – and far more immediately actionable – making the product attractive for personal use. It’s free to receive a ROK Talk call too.

“ROK Talk connects families and other social groups as easily as it connects  a businessman with his colleagues around the world. This is our first step into giving businesses and the socially networked generation the tools they need to communicate more effectively, and we believe that there is massive potential here to not only revolutionise group calling, but to make it as seamless and ultimately as ubiquitous as person-to-person calling is now.” said Lawrence Alexander, CEO of ROK.

If you’re interested in joining the free trial of ROK Talk - you;ll need a Symbian 3rd Edition device such as the Nokia N73, E65, E61, E61i - you can register at www.roktalk.com.

Are you being complacent about your international roaming? Well, if you are, Sherry Madera, CEO of AwayPhone is not impressed.

Will your mobile roaming bill be as depressing as the UK’s summer? Don’t let European price cap make you complacent about the cost of calling while on holiday warns AwayPhone

With services such as AwayPhone, there is next to no excuse for being nailed for just over £15 for a ten minute call back to the UK from Morocco by your mobile operator… if you were using AwayPhone’s service, you’d only have paid £3.

The biggest problem is, exactly as the headline here states. Complacency. If you’re only going to Morocco for 3 days, can you be bothered to find a local mobile operator sim card? Not generally — so you get absolutely nailed for your calls. As always, you don’t realise just how much you use your mobile phone, particularly if you’re a British national obsessed with ‘connectedness’.

If you’re starting a 3 month contract in Morocco, yes, then you’ll sort it out and get yourself a local pay-as-you-go-sim. The disconnect is for smaller periods of time. I think we’re all conditioned to expect that ‘my phone is tri/quad band, it’ll work in Morocco’… aye… but we totally forget the cost implications, … STILL!

In possibly the least exciting re-brand of the year, UK premium regulator ICSTIS is changing it’s name to PhonepayPlus.

From 15th October 2007, the much loved/feared (depending on whether you’ve ever run premium services) ICSTIS name will disappear, to be replaced with the new “more accurate” branding.

According to ICSTIS, PhonepayPlus will give consumers a much better understanding of the help and advice they can provide. PhonepayPlus will continue where ICSTIS left off.  They’ll also be “focusing on on pre-empting and preventing problems”.

And so the press release goes on, waxing lyrically about all the things they’re planning to do - which in a nutshell is nothing that they didn’t do before. Which is nice.

So to summarise, it’s business as usual from mid-October, ableit with a new shiny name. Hurrah