AT&T Offers Voicemail To Text Service

AT&T has finally stepped up and has begun offering a new voicemail to text service, the cost? A whopping $10/mo!! Yes I said $10/mo!

AT&T's Voicemail to Text lets you:

• Receive your voicemail messages as text messages, emails, or both
• Respond how you want – call back, send a text, or reply by email
• Forward your voicemail messages to others by text message or email
• Save your messages in your phone or on your computer for as long as you want

In addition, the service lets you archive the messages forever, instead of deleting them in 21 or 30 days. You can also read or listen to them in any order whenever you want.

I applaud AT&T for stepping up and finally offering the service, but $10/mo come one. I've been testing Google Voice and Ribbit Mobile and both of those are currently free. I haven't tried the new service, nor do I plan to. However I've seen a few of the early reviews and most people say the transcription service isn't all that great.

For the most part most basic voicemail-to-text services aren't going to be 100% accurate, but if I'm spending an extra $10 I want a top notch service. According to Appscout's Sascha Segan the service has has "serious trouble with proper names. It never gets my wife's name right - she's Leontine, and she's become Ilene, Jane, and Nancy when processed through Nuance's system. Union Square has become Indian Square. My own name has become Natasha."

The one intriguing feature that Sascha mentioned in his review was the forwarding of a wav file along with the text transcription. The feature isn't listed on the AT&T Voicemail To Text site but that would be one feature that could be handy.