Kicking things off with the LG Voyager, Verizon Wireless has just gone live with its visual voicemail service. No doubt inspired by the iPhone though Apple was hardly the first to introduce such a service (just ask its legal team), Verizon’s new service allows users to listen to voicemail messages by navigating through a visual representation of their voicemail inbox. In a nutshell, it marries voicemail and a call log. So what sets Verizon’s offering apart from third-party alternatives? For one thing, it’s cheap! At $3 per month, Verizon’s service is a fraction of the price of services like PhoneTag which charge $9.99 per month or more. Of course PhoneTag also transcribes voicemails and that is the core value of its offering, whereas Verizon’s service doesn’t quite go there. For your $3 you can store up to 40 messages for a maximum of 40 days and create up to 10 caller ID-based greetings. As for the implementation, the UI won’t be winning any American Design Awards any time soon but at that price you pretty much can’t go wrong. So if you’ve got a Voyager and you’re game to check out Verizon’s offering, the first thing you have to do is check your firmware version. VX10KV09 or later are ready to roll but if you’ve got something older you’ll need to drop by your local Verizon store for an upgrade.
[Via AppleInsider]
