Cutline Speaks

Is Voicemail Dead?

posted by The Cutline Team on September 30, 2008

According to Nielsen Mobile, Americans communicated via text message more than they phoned each other during the second quarter of this year. I checked my own usage and sure enough - 1434 text messages to 331 minutes. Of course, I didn't really need to check, though...recently a text from a friend started with "I know you don't like to talk on the phone..."

And to think - five years back I questioned why anyone would want to send a text.

So, has the convenience and instant gratification of texting doomed voicemail? A good friend changed his outgoing voicemail to request an email instead of a voice message. Personally, I have six messages sitting in my voicemail (I'm waiting for the mailbox to fill up).

Not that I don't want to connect with the people who call me, I just can't seem to be bothered with the process of checking voicemail. Caller ID tells me who called and I usually just call them back (or more likely text).

So with all this texting going on consumers are getting a better deal right? Not so fast...

When Verizon announced they were introducing month-to-month plans I was interested, but also surprised to discover a new plan with texting would actually cost me more. In the last three years the costs of texting has doubled! With a new plan, almost 40 percent of the cost would go to text messages (versus 15 percent for the same number of messages on my old plan).

I was slightly relieved to hear that Senator Herb Kohl of Wisconsin has started an inquiry into the rising cost of text message rates. Who knows if this will make a difference, but I may reach out to my Senators to ask them to join with Senator Kohl - just not via voicemail.

Anyone else still checking voicemail?

Tags for this post: communications