Roamware launches voice SMS service  

MUMBAI: Leading global roaming solutions firm Roamware

has combined the speed, efficiency and economy of SMS with the ubiquity and

accuracy of voice communications to launch Voice SMS capability over mobile

networks.






Portio Research has forecasted SMS to be worth $50bn by 2010. Roamware's Voice
SMS provides a non-intrusive 'Talk and Listen' messaging mechanism that allows

subscribers to deposit and exchange short peer-to-peer audio messages in near

real time, or to deposit voice messages for convenient collection by the

recipient.






Traditional SMS is used both to notify the recipient and provide an access route
to collect the voice message.






The service will appeal to users who are more likely to use messaging services
than conduct real time conversations. Voice SMS provides the best of both

worlds. It is more cost-effective and discreet than voicemail, and more

expressive than SMS, Roamware said.






Voice message deposit and retrieval is aided by multilingual IVR prompts. Sent
and received Voice SMS messages can be stored and repeatedly retrieved by

subscribers, who can play, pause, and delete messages, as well as linking

together all messages in the same 'conversation'.






Roamware CEO Bobby Srinivasan said: "This is 'talk and listen' as an
alternative to 'type and read'. Voice SMS overcomes issues of language, literacy

and regional etiquette, opening up new revenue streams without any additional

investment in either infrastructure or handset design."