Comverse Drives Industry 'specs' for Visual Voicemail on Mobile Handsets

New industry specifications for visual voicemail, driven by Comverse, tier-1 operators and major handset vendors, have been adopted by the Open Mobile Terminal Platform (OMTP). The new global specifications for visual voicemail cover various factors, such as how messages are configured and retrieved on mobile handsets. This type of universal consistency can enable visual voicemail to be offered by operators and handset vendors to virtually all customers, which would help boost its penetration.

Around the world, millions of people are already using visual voicemail because it dramatically enhances the user experience compared to conventional voicemail. Instead of dialling in for voice messages, users see information about each voicemail in a message inbox, such as sender, time of call and message length, and then click to listen to any message. They also can save, forward and reply to messages.

“Reducing fragmentation across the mobile communications industry is an important part of fulfilling our mission to make life better and less complicated for consumers,” said Tim Haysom, Chief Marketing Officer at OMTP, which is comprised of 35 operators, handset manufacturers, chip makers, content providers, and middleware vendors. “Besides providing consistency and security across all mobile handsets, these recommendations will allow visual voicemail to fulfill its huge mass market potential.”

Comverse Visual Voicemail is part of the company’s Voice HUB, which is a single platform for multiple voice-related services, such as next-generation voicemail, Ringback Tones, and Call Completion. Operators can reap cost savings from the Voice HUB’s unified platform because it reuses major components and takes advantage of centralised operation, maintenance and provisioning.

Posted to the site on 1st June 2009