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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: alydar who wrote (63321)	11/25/2001 9:24:36 AM
From: Bill Fischofer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

Re: Voice mail Yes the RBOCs are very creative in developing and marketing these services. They sell the consumer Caller ID then they sell the telemarketers ways to get around this and be anonymous. Then they sell the consumer an "enhanced" service which is supposed to offer "anonymous call rejection" and then turn around and sell telemarketers ways around this too. An escalating arms race of service plan opportunities each with its own attached revenue stream. Has anyone else noticed how despite long distance charges dropping the local phone bill somehow manages to keep growing? Yes, I too use voice mail mainly because today it is the only way to get messages while you're on the phone. But if the phone system were IP based I could buy a programmable box that would filter and process calls according to my preferences rather according to a limited set of "service plan" offerings that my RBOC saw fit to provide. The result would be better service at lower cost.

To: alydar who wrote (63321)	11/25/2001 11:21:10 AM
From: rudedog	Respond to of 74651

Rocky - it is a good analogy - but for a different reason than you state. I had voice mail at my office and an answering machine at my home for years. Shifted about 2 years ago to voice mail with my RBOC. Still a long way from perfect - I still have to wade through messages serial fashion with nothing but the caller ID and length to guide me. But about 8 months ago I started using a service from Sprint which provided a version of unified messaging. This allows me to administer all aspects of my 4 phone lines - call forwarding, call history, etc. - from my PC as well as from the phone. All of my incoming calls go into an "inbox" which can be sorted by caller name or ID, time, length of message, urgency - and I can apply inbox rules just like email. I can see everything that came in at a glance. I can forward header information to my blackberry if I want, based on whether I need to know (for example a call from my wife or kids). Sure, I can respond to the "beep" on my cell phone too, but the blackberry tells me who called and how long the message is without me having to call in. That package is about to be replaced by a beta program from one of the RBOCs which adds the ability to digitize the phone message and send it as email - that way I can sort messages and listen to them on my PDA. Plus some additional features I have not investigated yet. I doubt that the broad shift from centralized to decentralized will change - the power to do things the way I like and add features locally is just too valuable, and (just like in the mainframe era) the time to add features to a centralized system will always keep them well behind the curve. But all the old line centralized thinkers who see time standing still can keep on hoping...