Esendex launches Voice SMS

Esendex aren’t sitting on their arses. There’s a lot of mobile companies that are. I like to see innovation. Innovation in spades, that’s the way ahead. And Esendex are really pushing the envelope, conceiving and implementing useful SMS related applications.

Only recently they launched an SMS-to-blog service and today they’ve gone live with Voice SMS.

The product page is here.

Essentially, Voice SMS enables text messages ‘to be heard’. This isn’t an entirely new service. It has been possible to offer this kind of facility if you’ve got a shitload of patience, a bucketload of money and a team of developers standing by. Esendex have made it push-button-simple though.

You simply use their service to submit your text message into their system. It converts your text into an audio message — they’re using ‘market leading transcription software’ so I imagine it’ll be as good as what you and I are used to — then the Esendex server places a voice call to the recipient. This is billed exactly the same as a standard SMS by Esendex. WHen the recipient answers, they’re played the audio message and given the option to acknowledge receipt (can’t quite do that with text messages). If the call goes to voicemail or is engaged, the Esendex server just redials.

I can think of a lot of applications for this.

Doctors appointments. Server-fail messages (“Server 101 has failed, please could you log on and fix it.”). Tons of applications.

Nice one Esendex.

You can get a free 7 day trial and start testing right-away here. Or phone them up, ask to speak to top chap Adam and tell him that I said you should talk.