What Does Voicemail Message Via Phone Company

Voice message storage and retrieval

A voicemail organisation (also known equally vocalism message or voice depository financial institution) is a calculator-based system that allows users and subscribers to exchange personal voice messages; to select and deliver voice information; and to procedure transactions relating to individuals, organizations, products, and services, using an ordinary telephone. The term is also used more broadly to denote any organisation of carrying a stored telecommunications voice letters, including using an answering machine. About jail cell phone services offering voicemail as a basic feature; many corporate individual branch exchanges include versatile internal vocalisation-messaging services, and *98 vertical service code subscription is available to most individual and small business concern landline subscribers (in the US).

History [edit]

The term Voicemail was coined by Televoice International (later Voicemail International, or VMI) for their introduction of the first US-broad Voicemail service in 1980. Although VMI trademarked the term, it somewhen became a generic term for automatic phonation services employing a telephone. Voicemail popularity continues today with Internet telephone services such as Skype, Google Voice and ATT that integrate voice, voicemail and text services for tablets and smartphones.

Voicemail systems were developed in the late 1970s by Vox Message Substitution (VMX). They became popular in the early on 1980s when they were fabricated bachelor on PC-based boards.^[i] In September 2012 a report from USA Today and Vonage claimed that voicemail was in decline. The report said that the number of voicemail letters declined 8 percent compared to 2011.^[two] ^[3]

Features [edit]

Voicemail systems are designed to convey a caller'southward recorded audio message to a recipient. To do so they contain a user interface to select, play, and manage messages; a delivery method to either play or otherwise deliver the bulletin; and a notification ability to inform the user of a waiting bulletin. About systems utilise phone networks, either cellular- or landline-based, equally the conduit for all of these functions. Some systems may utilise multiple telecommunications methods, permitting recipients and callers to think or go out messages through multiple methods such as PCs, PDA, prison cell phones, or smartphones.

Simple voicemail systems part as a remote answering machine using touch-tones equally the user interface. More complicated systems may use other input devices such as vocalism or a computer interface. Simpler voicemail systems may play the sound bulletin through the phone, while more than advanced systems may take alternative delivery methods, including email or text message delivery, message transfer and forwarding options, and multiple mailboxes.

Almost all modernistic voicemail systems use digital storage and are typically stored on computer data storage. Notification methods also vary based on the voicemail system. Simple systems may not provide active notification at all, instead requiring the recipient to check with the system, while others may provide an indication that messages are waiting.

More than avant-garde systems may exist integrated with a company's PABX, with a call center ACD for automated telephone call distribution; with mobile or paging terminals for message alarm; and estimator systems/information bases for delivering information or processing orders. Interactive voice response (IVR) systems may use digital data stored in a corporate data base to select pre-recorded words and phrases stored in a voicemail vocabulary to form sentences that are delivered to the caller.

Message centers [edit]

The conventional solution to efficient treatment of phone communication in businesses was the "message heart". A message center or "message desk-bound" was a centralized, transmission answering service inside a company staffed by a few operators who answered all incoming phone calls. Extensions that were decorated or rang "no reply" would forward to the message center using a device called a "telephone call director". The telephone call managing director had a button for each extension in the visitor which would wink when that person'southward extension forwarded to the message center. A little label side by side to the button told the operator the person existence called.

While it was an improvement over basic multi-line systems, the message center had many disadvantages. Many calls would come in simultaneously at tiptop periods, such as lunch fourth dimension, and operators were frequently decorated. This left bulletin attendants with little time to take each message accurately. Ofttimes, they were not familiar with employees' names and "buzzwords" and how to spell or pronounce them. Messages were scribbled on pink slips and distributed past the internal mail system and messages, often arrived at people'southward desks later on lengthy delays, contained picayune content other than the caller'southward name and number, and were often inaccurate, with misspelled names and wrong telephone numbers.

Record-based telephone answering machines had come into the residential telephone marketplace, but they weren't used much in the corporate environment due to physical limitations of the technology. One answering machine was needed for each telephone; messages couldn't exist recorded if the user was using the telephone; letters had to be retrieved in sequential order; and messages couldn't exist retrieved remotely, selectively discarded, saved, or forwarded to others. Further, the manufacturers of PBXs (private co-operative exchanges—the name for corporate telephone systems) used proprietary digital telephone sets in order to increment the functionality and value of the PBX. These phone sets were, past blueprint, incompatible with answering machines.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, the cost of long-distance calling decreased and more concern communications were conducted past telephone. Equally corporations grew and labor rates increased, the ratio of secretaries to employees decreased. With more than communication by phone, multiple time zones, and fewer secretaries, real-time phone communications were hampered by callers being unable to reach people. Some early studies showed that only 1 in 4 phone calls resulted in a completed call and half the calls were one-way in nature (that is, they did not require a conversation). This happened considering people were either not at piece of work (due to time zone differences, beingness away on business, etc.), or if they were at work, they were on the phone, away from their desks in meetings, on breaks, etc. This bottleneck hindered the effectiveness of business activities and decreased both individual and group productivity. It likewise wasted the caller's fourth dimension and created delays in resolving time-disquisitional problems.

Invention [edit]

The first public records describing voice recording were reported in a New York newspaper and the Scientific American in November 1877. Thomas A. Edison had appear the invention of his "phonograph" maxim "the object was to record telephone messages and transmit them again by telephone." Edison practical for a Usa patent in December 1877 and shortly thereafter demonstrated the motorcar to publishers, the U.s.a. Congress and President Rutherford B. Hayes, recording and playing "Mary had a piffling lamb..." and "at that place was a trivial girl who had a footling curl... " and other ditties popular at the time. In an commodity outlining his ain ideas of the future usefulness of his auto Edison'southward list began with "Letter writing, and all kinds of dictation without the aid of a stenographer." In other words, "voice messages" or "Voice-mail". By 1914, Edison'southward phonograph business included a dictating machine (the Ediphone) and the "Telescribe", a machine combining the phonograph and the telephone, which recorded both sides of telephone conversations.^[4]

For nearly ane hundred years, there were few innovations or advances in telephone services. Voicemail was the result of innovations in telephone products and services made possible past developments in reckoner applied science during the 1970s. These innovations began with the Motorola Pageboy, a simple "pager" or "beeper" introduced in 1974 that was generally offered in conjunction with answering services that handled busy / no-respond overloads and afterward hours calls for businesses and professionals. Operators wrote downwards a caller's bulletin, sent a folio alert or "beep" and when the party called back, an operator dictated the message.

With the introduction of "voice" pagers, like the Motorola Pageboy Two operators could transmit a vox message directly to the pager and the user could hear the message. However, messages arrival was frequently untimely and privacy issues, too as the high cost, eventually caused the demise of these services. Past the mid 1970s digital storage and analog to digital conversion devices had emerged and paging companies began handling client messages electronically. Operators recorded a brusk message (five to half dozen seconds, e.thou. "please telephone call Mr. Smith") and the messages were delivered automatically when the client called the answering service. It would only accept a curt stride for the commencement voicemail application to exist born.

Estimator manufacturers, telephone equipment manufacturers, and software firms began developing more sophisticated solutions as more powerful and less expensive computer processors and storage devices became available. This set the phase for a creation of a broad spectrum of calculator based Central Office and Customer Premises Equipment that would eventually support enhanced voice solutions such every bit voicemail, audiotex, interactive voice response (IVR) and oral communication recognition solutions that began emerging in the 1980s. However, broad adoption of these products and services would depend on the global proliferation of touch tone phones and mobile phone services which would not occur until the late 1980s.

Controversy [edit]

Many contributed to the creation of the modern-solar day voicemail. Legal battles ensued for decades.^[5] The truthful get-go inventor ^{[ citation needed ]} of voicemail, patent number 4,124,773 (Audio Storage and Distribution System), is Robin Elkins.^[6] "Though Elkins received a patent in 1978, telecommunications giants began offering voicemail without paying Elkins a penny in royalties."^[7] "Elkins never expected to spend 10 years of his life battling some of the world's largest corporations, either. But in one case he patented his system, he figured he should protect information technology."^[8] Subsequently, Elkins successfully licensed his patented technology to IBM, Dec, and WANG, among many others. Unfortunately, his patent did non address simultaneity of vocalization message access and storage and the application for patent was filed after the patent application of the system patented by Kolodny and Hughes, as described below.

Pioneering applications [edit]

One of the first mod twenty-four hour period voicemail applications was invented past Gerald M. Kolodny and Paul Hughes, which was described in an article in the medical periodical, Radiology (Kolodny GM, Cohen How-do-you-do, Kalisky A. Rapid-access arrangement for radiology reports: a new concept. Radiology. 1974;111(3):717–9) A patent was practical for by Kolodny and Hughes in 1975, prior to the patent applications of both Elkins and Matthews and was issued in 1981 (US patent four,260,854). The patent was assigned to Sudbury Systems of Sudbury Massachusetts who proceeded to market and sell such systems to corporations and hospitals. IBM, Sony and Lanier, as well equally several smaller makers of voicemail systems, licensed the Sudbury patent for their voicemail systems. A patent arrange, brought by Pitney Bowes, claiming prior art to the Sudbury patent, was denied by the United states of america Commune Court, Commune of Connecticut on November 8, 2000. A similar arrange brought byVDI Technologies against the Kolodny and Hughes patent claiming prior art was dismissed by the Us District Courtroom in New Hampshire on December nineteen, 1991.

IBM Audio Distribution System [edit]

The starting time ^{[ citation needed ]} vocalization-messaging application, the Voice communication Filing System, was adult at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Heart in 1973 under the leadership of Stephen Boies.^[9] It was later renamed the Audio Distribution System (ADS).

ADS used the human voice and the fixed-line touch-tone telephones that predated estimator screens and mobile phones. The first operational prototypes were used by 750 IBM executives mainly in the US for their daily piece of work. Those prototypes ran on an IBM System/7 computer fastened to an IBM VM370 for additional storage.

In 1978 the prototype was converted to run on an IBM Series/1 computer. In September 1981 IBM started marketing ADS in America and Europe: the starting time customer installation was completed in February 1982.

ADS,^[10] marketed past IBM and briefly by AT&T Corporation, was well featured for voice messaging, the result of IBM'southward considerable homo-factors enquiry plus observation of operational utilise. Using a 1980s computer requiring air-conditioning, it was expensive and physically large. With farther development it grew to handle upward to 3000 users, 100 hours of messages, multiple languages, message notification to a host reckoner, and xvi simultaneous users.^[eleven]

ADS could be continued to substitution lines and private exchanges including the IBM 2750 and 3750 Switching Systems available in Germany, French republic, Italy, Belgium, and the UK.

IBM sold many systems,^[10] Installations^[11] including:

The 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games "Olympic Message System" with seven systems serving 7,800 athletes and 6,000 staff, trainers, coaches and officials — and voice prompts in the 12 Olympic official languages (English, French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Arabic, Japanese, Standard mandarin, Norwegian, and Italian) for 55,000 messages, totalling over 100,000 message minutes^[12]
Full general Motors, U.s. with 8 ADS systems saving 30 percent of the costs of its long-distance calls
Systems across America and Europe for insurance-company staff to study their appraisals of damaged vehicles and hear the locations of their next appraisal sites
Esso in French republic and Mars in England for salesforce coordination
Rowntree'due south in York, England to liaise with the chocolate-makers' agents across time zones in Europe, North America, the Middle East, and Australia
Italian republic from early on 1985: 10 systems beyond Italy for the public to call to hear locally-relevant autostrade traffic-delay information
Milan, Italy: two systems for automated drome announcements, handling multiple languages.

Delta 1 [edit]

Another visitor, Delphi Communications of California, deserves some partial credit for invention of voicemail. Under the leadership of Jay Stoffer, Delphi developed a proprietary arrangement called Delta 1 that picked up incoming calls directly from the telephone visitor. Stoffer presented the Delphi concept publicly to the clan of Telephone Answering Services around 1973 and the prototype organisation was launched in San Francisco in 1976 by a Delphi company called VoiceBank. Delphi developed Delta i equally a purely service-oriented voice messaging system to answer subscriber telephones for businesses and professionals. Delta i required human intervention for bulletin eolith. While three machines were built, only one motorcar was put into operational service. The completely automatic vocalism messaging system (Delta 2) was developed for initial operational use in Los Angeles in 1981. Apparently Delta 2 was built, installed and operational for a brusk while, merely unfortunately Delphi's major early investor, Exxon Enterprises, abruptly close down Delphi in July 1982. Cypher further was done with Delphi'south applied science. A patent was applied for and issued for Delphi's Automated Phone Voice Service System. The patent, U.s. Patent No. 4,625,081, was issued later Delphi'south closure, simply Delphi'south avails (and the patent) were transferred to another Exxon company, Gilbarco, which made equipment for gas pumps at filling stations. Gilbarco is at present owned by GEC in the United Kingdom.

AT&T [edit]

AT&T developed a system called 1A Voice Storage Organisation to support custom services including voicemail for the public phone system.^[thirteen] It worked in conjunction with the companies 1A ESS and 5ESS systems. Development started in mid-1976,^[14] with first deployment in early 1979. Friendly user service started in March 1980. The service was terminated in 1981 equally a issue of the US FCC Figurer Inquiry II, which prohibited enhanced services from being provided by the regulated network.

VMX [edit]

In 1979, a company was founded in Texas by Gordon Matthews called ECS Communications (the name was later changed to VMX, for Phonation Message exchange). VMX developed a 3000-user vox messaging system chosen the VMX/64 and was the first ^{[ commendation needed ]} visitor to offer a voice messaging system for auction commercially for corporate use. In the early 1980s, VMX sold vocalisation messaging systems to several large corporations, such equally 3M, Kodak, American Limited, Intel, Hoffmann–La Roche, Corning Drinking glass, Arco, Shell Canada and Westinghouse. The impressive list of early adopters started the ball rolling on corporate voicemail. While VMX began with a good start, it failed at developing the market, and the company was not a commercial success. It took several years before its products could reply outside calls (and and so merely under certain circumstances), they were physically enormous, expensive, light on of import user features and had serious reliability issues. In addition, the user interface was cumbersome, requiring the users to retrieve non-intuitive multi-digit Touch-tone commands. Matthews, a prolific entrepreneur and patentor, applied for and was granted a patent on voicemail (patent number four,371,752) which issued in February 1983. The patent was promoted as the pioneering patent for voicemail. Nevertheless, the patent application was filed on November 26, 1979, five years afterward, and issued in 1983, two years after that of Kolodny and Hughes as described above, and cannot, therefore, be considered as the pioneering foundation of voicemail.

VMX asserted infringement outset with IBM, AT&T and so Wang, but all three companies reportedly would take been able to invalidate the patent on the basis of prior art and their licenses from Sudbury Systems Inc, for their Kolodny and Hughes patent (meet above). VMX cleverly achieved a settlement where the patent was let stand, not challenged in courtroom and IBM, Wang and AT&T (in separate settlements) received royalty-free licenses to all VMX patents. Wang, the terminal of the majors to get such a license for itself and Voice-mail service International, essentially paid $xx,000 and cross-licensed a few patent applications (not issued patents). IBM and AT&T too cross-licensed a number of patents to VMX, virtually of which were obsolete or outdated. VMX could claim that several major companies licensed the patent (fifty-fifty though they paid almost nothing to VMX for the rights), just that office wasn't disclosed. The patent was never challenged in court and VMX then continued to assert (incorrectly) that it had invented voicemail and that Matthews was the "father of phonation-mail". Following the settlement with Wang, VMX settled with Octel Communications in commutation for a small payment and Octel'southward agreeing not to litigate any VMX patent, Octel received a paid-upwardly, royalty-gratuitous license on all existing and future VMX patents.

IVR Vocalization Recognition [edit]

In 1985, Voice Response Inc. (formerly Call-It Co) a subsidiary of Lee Enterprises, Davenport IA, entered the fast-growing Interactive Vocalisation (IVR) response market under the direction of Bob Ross, President.^[xv] About a yr later, VRI introduced 1 of the get-go "successful" IVR applications that utilized phonation recognition (rather than touch tone) to capture caller responses. Voice recognition technology had corking difficulty with regional and ethnic differences and nuances which resulted in a high incidence of error. VRI discovered that hesitation (delayed response) signaled caller confusion or misunderstanding which often resulted in an inaccurate response. VRI adult proprietary techniques that measured user response times and used the information to make real-fourth dimension changes to the application'due south dialog with the caller. VRI found that the conviction level of a "doubtable" caller response could be increased by asking "Did you say (Chicago), Yes or No", a standard question heard in social club taking or reservation making IVR applications today. VRI pioneering applications, including subscription fulfillment for Fourth dimension and Life magazines, proved faster and less expensive than call centers using live operators and although VRI did non survive, their voice recognition processes became industry standards and VRI's patent USPTO - patent RE34,587 was eventually licensed by Intel/Dialogic and Nuance.

PC-based Voicemail [edit]

Amidst the booming popularity of the IBM PC-AT, a variety of companies popped upwardly to market place add-in boards to the AT. These companies aimed to employ the PC as an cheap hardware platform for hosting add-in boards and software providing voice mail functionality for small businesses that wanted something more than sophisticated than an answering motorcar but couldn't afford pricey conventional voice mail solutions. Amongst the most successful of these was The Complete PC, founded in 1986 in Silicon Valley. At its peak, The Complete PC was selling over twenty,000 voicemail boards per year, some including facsimile capabilities as well for pocket-size businesses.^[16] The Complete PC was sold to publicly-listed Florida-based Boca Enquiry Inc. in 1993.^[17] An early arrow was BIG Mouth, a single line simplified voicemail solution, invented by TT Technology and Charles Wohl, later joined the Swedish tech team under ESSELTE VOICE and produced 2 and 4 line analog cards, to be mounted on standard industry PC Boards.

International Voicemail Association [edit]

In 1987, voicemail service providers in the US and Europe joined to grade the Voice Mail Association of Europe (VMA) with René Beusch, Radio-Suisse and Paul Finnigan, Finnigan United states of america^[18] serving as VMA Chairman and President respectively. The first VMA meeting was held in Stockholm Huddinge by Voicemail Svenska AB in 1987, organized by its founder Lars Olof Kanngard. The tech team in Voicemail Svenska AB was granted the right to port the Voicemail from PDP systems to their own PC-lath solution, which become known as the MiniVoice, later become ESSELTE VOICE AB. The VMA invited service providers, vendors and consultants to nourish semi-almanac conferences that included presentations, discussions and reporting of experiences. VMA membership was eventually expanded to include representatives from telecommunication organizations worldwide and became "The International Vocalization-mail Clan". By the late 1980s, the Bell Operating companies, Tigon and other independent service providers in the U.s. had joined the VMA. In 1992, VMA members conducted an "Data Week Tour of the U.S.", sharing ideas with major telecom operators. VMA working groups promoted collaboration and adoption of industry standards to the ITU and CCITT and at the 1999 CCITT conference in Geneva, Switzerland, demonstrated worldwide exchange of letters between the major voicemail vendors' platforms using the VPIM networking standard. Beusch and Finnigan led the VMA until 1998 and 1999 respectively and the system continues to serve the vocalization services manufacture today.^[19]

Corporate voicemail [edit]

In the early 1980s, there were over 30 companies vying for the corporate voicemail marketplace. Among the many contenders were IBM, VMX, Wang, Octel, ROLM, AT&T, Northern Telecom, Delphi Communications, Voice and Data Systems, Opcom, Commterm, Genesis, Brook Trout, Innovative Applied science (ITI), Glenayre, BBL, AVT, AVST, Digital Sound, Centigram, Voice-mail International and Active Vocalism. Only a few of these companies were successful in capturing a pregnant market share and remain in the voicemail business today.

ROLM Corporation, founded in 1969 by Gene Richeson, Ken Oshman, Walter Loewenstern and Robert Maxfield, was the first PBX manufacturer to offer integrated voicemail with its PhoneMail system, its registered trademark. PhoneMail offered impressive recording quality of its digitized letters. ROLM's digital PBX (called a CBX, for Computerized Co-operative commutation) was the kickoff to enable PhoneMail to illuminate a message waiting low-cal on ROLM phones equipped with message waiting lights (also a stutter dialtone is used with analog and digital phones). Rolm was sold to IBM, who later sold information technology to Siemens who offer PhoneMail in various configurations/sizes (including a micro-sized version) and its unified messaging successor, Xpressions 470. ROLM was purchased by IBM in the mid-1980s (which was a fiscal disaster for the profitable ROLM, as IBM clearly could not grasp the laid dorsum, "think exterior the box" mental attitude of ROLM,^{[ commendation needed ]} which was the #two PBX supplier in the Usa from the mid-'70s to late '80s), then sold one-half interest to the German company Siemens.^[20] In 1992, Siemens bought ROLM entirely from IBM and the original ROLM product line was done for, except for PhoneMail (the only product Siemens did not destroy). VMX suffered from poor production and ineffective management and was almost to fold when Opcom merged with it. The surviving company was called VMX, but VMX was all simply erased by Opcom except for its name and patent portfolio.

Opcom, a visitor founded by David Ladd, adult a voicemail arrangement primarily marketed to smaller enterprises. Opcom pioneered and patented the feature of automatic attendant (US Patent numbers four,747,124 and 4,783,796 both issued in 1988), an integral part of any voicemail systems. The automatic attendant enables callers to directly calls by pressing single digit keys, east.1000. "If you are making domestic reservations, printing 'i'; for international reservations, press '2'; etc." Opcom later pioneered the concept of Unified Messaging (to be discussed later in this article). Opcom eventually acquired VMX through a reverse merger, (Opcom was private and VMX was public) and the surviving company VMX was eventually acquired by Octel.

Octel Communications, founded in 1982 by Bob Cohn and Peter Olson, broadly commercialized the corporate voice messaging market. While Octel benefited from the work and experiments of others it was the commencement stand-solitary voicemail company to build a strong business and strategy to win in this difficult market. In improver, Octel innovated substantially new technology which contributed heavily to its success including a organisation architecture that was physically smaller, faster, more reliable, and much less plush than other corporate vendors. Octel's voicemail system, was introduced in 1984, included unique system features, many of which were patented, which gave Octel market leadership. In 1990 Octel was one of the get-go companies to introduce the concept of Unified Messaging.

AT&T/Lucent created its version of voicemail in the early 1990s (called Audix) but it would only work on AT&T/Clear-cut PBXs. Northern Telecom developed Tiptop Post and followed the same strategy as AT&T in that Superlative Mail but worked with Northern Telecom PBXs. Every bit a result, neither visitor achieved much market share with large national or multi-national accounts. AT&T spun off its equipment business into a visitor called Lucent Technologies, and Northern Telecom changed its name to Nortel.

By the mid-1990s, Octel had become the number one supplier of voicemail both to corporations and to carriers. Octel had nearly a sixty percent market share in the U.s., Canada, Europe and Nihon (for big corporations) and between 30 percent and 100 percent of the carrier market, depending on the country. By 1997 Octel'southward biggest competitors were Audix, made by Lucent, and Meridian Post, made past Nortel. In July 1997, Octel was purchased past Clear-cut Applied science. Lucent's AUDIX sectionalisation was merged into Octel to form the Octel Messaging Division. By 2000, some estimate that there were over 150,000,000 active users of corporate and carrier voicemail made by the Octel Messaging Segmentation. Presently thereafter, Clear-cut spun off its corporate business, including the Octel Messaging Division, into a visitor known as Avaya.^[21]

Boston Engineering, uReach Technologies, and Comverse Applied science all entered the carrier market in the early 1990s. Boston was somewhen acquired by Comverse, making it the second-largest supplier to carriers after Octel. However, in a few years, Comverse became the largest supplier to carriers with Lucent/Octel holding its leadership in the corporate market and second place with carriers. Primal Technologies entered the market in 2003 with Web-based Voicemail and VM-to-Email for corporate clients. For IP-based voicemail systems, Ericsson claims market leadership with its Ericsson Messaging-over-IP (MoIP) solution. Comverse changed its proper noun to Xius in 2015. uReach provided VoiceMail services for Verizon and a host of other Tier i and Tier 2 carriers and was the voicemail system used by Verizon FIOS. uReach Technologies was acquired past GENBAND in 2014.^[22] In a move to reach more millennials, Primal Technologies NFV Unified Visual Voicemail recently added WhatsApp and Facebook integration for Voicemail eolith notifications.

Public telephone services [edit]

In the US, the Bell Operating Companies and their cellular divisions had been prohibited by the FCC from offer voicemail and other enhanced services such every bit paging and telephone answering services (no such prohibition existed in foreign countries). A ruling by Estimate Harold H. Greene on March seven, 1988, removed this barrier and allowed the BOCs to offer voicemail service, all the same, they were not immune to pattern or industry equipment used to provide voicemail services.

The opportunity created by the Greene decision, plus Voicemail International'due south abandonment of its market place lead for carrier-grade systems, created a new opportunity for competing manufacturers and those who had been focusing on the corporate market. Unisys, Boston Technology, and Comverse Technology were quick to address the BOC and PTT market. Octel, who had loftier capacity systems in use internally by all vii Regional Bell Operating companies, launched a new generation of its large system specifically designed for carriers and was compliant with "NEBS standards", the tight standard required by phone companies for whatsoever equipment located in their central offices.

While Unisys eventually secured PacBell's residential voicemail services, Boston Applied science became the mainstay of Bell Atlantic's residential voicemail offering and Comverse Technology enjoyed some success in the European market place; Octel became the provider of voicemail platforms for near all of the major US wireless carriers (including the vii RBOCs, AT&T Wireless and McCaw), Canadian cellular carriers and a large percent of the GSM carriers around the world.

Even so, it didn't accept long for Comverse to become the largest supplier to the BOCs and PTTs with Clear-cut/Octel holding its leadership in the corporate marketplace and second place with carriers. Boston was eventually acquired by Comverse making it the second-largest supplier to carriers after Octel.

Unified messaging [edit]

Unified Messaging integrated voicemail into Microsoft Exchange, the corporate email arrangement made by Microsoft. Unified Messaging had been invented by Roberta Cohen, Kenneth Huber and Deborah Factory at AT&T Bell Labs. The patent for Unified Messaging was received in June 1989 (Patent number four,837,798).

Unified Messaging allowed users to access voicemail and e-mail messages using either the graphical user interface (GUI) on their PC, or using the phone user interface (TUI). Using a PC, users could run across voicemails and emails mixed together in their electronic mail inbox. Voicemails had a piffling telephone icon next to them and emails had a lilliputian envelope icon next to them (see figure below). For voicemail, they'd see the "header information" (sender, date sent, size, and bailiwick). Users could double-click a voicemail from their e-mail inbox and hear the message through their PC or a phone adjacent to their desk.

Using any phone in the world, users could listen to vocalization letters like they commonly did, plus have emails read to them (in synthesized voice). Voice messages could exist sent using email or telephone addressing schemes, and the information networking infrastructure was used to send messages between locations rather than the public switched telephone network. Information technology wasn't until the early 2000s and the availability of reliable, high capacity email servers, high speed internet connections and PCs with speakers or microphones that Unified Messaging achieved commercial success.

Virtual telephony [edit]

Other interesting markets adult from the carrier marketplace including a concept chosen "virtual telephony". Virtual Telephony, adult past Octel, used voicemail to provide phone service quickly in emerging countries without wiring for telephones. The problem this solved was that emerging countries did not take many telephones. Wiring for telephones was very expensive, and many poorer citizens did not accept homes to wire. The economies of emerging countries were held back partly because people could not communicate beyond the area where they could walk or ride a bicycle. Giving them phones was one way to aid their economies, but there was not a applied way to practise information technology. In some countries, the wait for a phone was several years and the cost was in the thousands of dollars. Cellular phones were not an option at the time because they were extremely expensive (thousands of dollars per handset) and the infrastructure to install cell sites was likewise costly.

With virtual telephony, each person could be given a phone number (merely the number, non the phone) and a voice mailbox. The denizen would as well be given a pager. If someone called the telephone number, it never rang on an actual telephone, just would exist routed immediately to a fundamental voicemail organization. The voicemail system answered the phone call and the caller could get out a long, detailed message. Equally before long as the message was received, the voicemail system would trigger the citizen's pager. When the page was received, the citizen would detect a pay telephone and call in to pick up the message. This concept was used successfully in South America and Southward Africa.

Instant messaging in voice [edit]

By the year 2000, voicemail had go a ubiquitous characteristic on phone systems serving companies, cellular and residential subscribers. Cellular and residential voicemail go along today in their previous grade, primarily simple phone answering. Email became the prevalent messaging system, email servers and software became quite reliable, and almost all function workers were equipped with multimedia desktop PCs.

The increase in wireless mobility, originally through cellular services and today through IP-based Wi-Fi, was also a driver for messaging convergence with mobile telephony. Today information technology is not merely fostering the use of speech communication user interfaces for message direction, just increasing the demand for retrieval of voice messages integrated with email. It also enables people to respond to both voice and email messages in vocalization rather than text. New services, such equally GotVoice, SpinVox and YouMail, are helping to blur the boundaries between voicemail and text by delivering voicemails to mobile phones equally SMS text messages.

Instant messaging in voice: The next development in messaging was in making text messaging real-time, rather than simply asynchronous store-and-frontward delivery into a mailbox. Although in the 1980s Minitel in France was extremely popular and Teletext was widely used in the US, instant messaging on the Internet began with the ICQ awarding developed in 1996 every bit a public Internet-based free text "chat" service for consumers, simply shortly was being used by business people also. It introduced the concept of Internet Protocol "presence management" or existence able to detect device connectivity to the Internet and contact recipient "availability" status to exchange real-time messages, also as personalized "Buddy list" directories to allow only people you knew to find out your status and initiate a real-time text messaging substitution with yous. Presence and Instant Messaging has since evolved into more than brusque text letters, merely now tin can include the exchange of data files (documents, pictures) and the escalation of the contact into a voice conversational connection.

Unified messaging with VoIP [edit]

Corporate voicemail did not change much until the appearance of Vocalization over IP (VoIP—voice being transmitted over the internet) and the evolution of Internet Protocol (IP) telephony applications to replace legacy PBX telephony (called TDM technologies). IP telephony inverse the way and technology of PBXs and the mode voicemail systems integrated with them. This, in turn, facilitated a new generation of Unified Messaging, which is now probable to grab on widely. The flexibility, manageability, lower costs, reliability, speed, and user convenience for messaging convergence is now possible where it wasn't before. This might include intra- and inter-enterprise contacts, mobile contacts, proactive application information delivery, and client contact applications.

The corporate IP telephony-based voicemail customer premises equipment market is served by several vendors including Avaya, Cisco systems, Adomo, Interactive Intelligence, Nortel, Mitel, 3Com, and AVST.^[23] Their marketing strategy will have to address the demand to support a diverseness of legacy PBXs besides every bit new Vocalism over IP equally enterprises migrate towards converging IP-based telecommunications. A similar state of affairs exists for the carrier market for voicemail servers, currently dominated by Comverse Technology, with some share still held by Lucent Technologies.

VoIP telephony enables centralized, shared servers, with remote administration and usage direction for corporate (enterprise) customers. In the by, carriers lost this business considering it was far too expensive and inflexible to accept remote managed facilities by the telephone company. With VoIP, remote assistants is far more economical. This applied science has re-opened opportunities for carriers to offering hosted, shared services for all forms of converged IP telecommunication, including IP-PBX and voicemail services. Because of the convergence of wired and wireless communications, such services may also include back up of a multifariousness of multi-modal handheld and desktop end user devices. This service, when offered for multiple extensions or telephone numbers is sometimes also called Unified Voice-postal service.

Benefits [edit]

Voicemail's introduction enabled people to leave lengthy, secure and detailed messages in natural voice, working mitt-in-manus with corporate phone systems. The adoption of voicemail in corporations improved the flow of communications and saved huge amounts of money. GE, ane of the pioneer adopters of voicemail in all of its offices around the world, claimed that voicemail saved, on average, over US$1,100 per year per employee. Needless to say, the ability to tell someone something without talking to them, can be a powerful reason to choose voicemail for commitment of a particular message.

Voicemail has ii main modes of operation: telephone answering and vocalism messaging. Telephone answering way answers outside calls and takes a bulletin from whatever outside caller (either considering the extension was busy or rang no-reply). Voice messaging enables whatsoever subscriber (someone with a mailbox number) to send letters straight to whatsoever or many subscribers' mailboxes without first calling them. Both of these modes are described beneath.

How voicemail works [edit]

This section describes how the original way, standalone, voicemail system worked with a corporate PBX. The principle is the same with Primal Office Switches (CO Switches) or Mobile Phone Switching Office (MTSOs). More than mod voicemail systems piece of work on the aforementioned principle, but some of the components may be shared with other systems, such as email systems.

Voicemail systems incorporate several elements shown in the figure beneath:

A key processor (CPU) that runs the operating system and a program (software) that gives the organization the await-and-feel of a voicemail system. This software includes thousands of pre-recorded prompts that "speak" to the users as they collaborate with the organisation
Disk controller and multiple disk drives for message storage
System disks which not simply include the software above, but also contain a complete directory of all users with pertinent information about each (name, extension number, voicemail preferences, and pointers to each of the letters stored on the message disk that belong to them)
Telephone interface organization that enables many phone lines to be connected to it

The drawing below shows how the voicemail system interacts with the PBX. Suppose an outside caller is calling Fred's extension 2345. The incoming telephone call comes in from the public network (A) and comes into the PBX. The call is routed to Fred's extension (B), but Fred doesn't respond. Subsequently a certain number of rings, the PBX stops ringing Fred'due south extension and forwards the call to an extension connected to the voicemail organization (C). It does this because PBXs are generally programmed to forwards decorated or unanswered calls to another extension. Simultaneously the PBX tells the voicemail system (through signaling link D) that the telephone call it is forwarding to voicemail is for Fred at extension 2345. In this way, the voicemail arrangement can answer the call with Fred'southward greeting.

There are many microprocessors throughout the organization since the system must handle large amounts of data and it is unacceptable to have any wait times (for instance, when the system is recording or playing your message, it is unacceptable if the organization stops recording momentarily like computers frequently do while accessing large files).

When Fred's extension frontward to the voicemail organization, the Phone Interface detects ringing. Information technology signals to the Key Processor (CPU) that a call is coming in. The CPU simultaneously receives a indicate on the PBX-Voicemail Data Link (D) telling it that extension 2345 is beingness forwarded on ring-no-answer to the specific extension that is now ringing. The CPU directs the Telephone Interface (which controls the line interface cards) to reply the call. The CPU's program realizes that it is a telephone call for Fred so information technology looks upward Fred'southward greeting immediately and directs the Disk Controller to offset playing it to the caller. It likewise plays some organisation prompts instructing the caller what comes next (for example, "When y'all have finished recording, you lot may hang upwardly or press '#' for more options"). All "talking" to the caller is washed through prompts that are selected by the CPU according to the program stored in the voicemail organisation. The CPU selects the prompts in response to the keys the caller presses.

The caller's message is digitized by the Telephone Interface system and transmitted to the Disk Controller for storage onto the Bulletin Disks. Some voicemail systems will scramble the message for further security. The CPU then stores the location of that message in the System Deejay inside Fred's mailbox directory entry. Afterward the caller hangs up and the message has been stored, the CPU sends a betoken to the PBX through the link (D) instructing the PBX to plow on the bulletin waiting light on Fred's phone.

When Fred comes dorsum to his desk and sees the light on his phone, he calls a designated extension number for the voicemail system (an actual extension number assigned to the lines in "C" in the figure above).

Again the Telephone Interface alerts the CPU that a telephone call is coming in on a item line, but this time the signaling from the PBX-Voicemail Data Link (D) indicates that Fred is calling direct, not being forwarded. The CPU directs the Telephone Interface to answer the phone call.

Since the CPU "knows" it is Fred (from the signaling on the Data Link D), it looks up Fred's information on the Arrangement Disk, specifically his password. The CPU then directs Disk Controller to play a log-on prompt to the user: "Delight enter your countersign." Once the password is entered (via Touch-tones), the CPU compares it to the right one and, if entered correctly, allows Fred to continue.

The CPU then determines (from Fred'south directory entry) that Fred has a new message. The CPU then presents Fred his options (e.chiliad., "Y'all have a new bulletin. To listen to your new message, press 1; to record a bulletin, press two" etc.) The options are presented by the CPU directing the Disk Controller to play prompts, and the CPU listens for Touch-tones from Fred. This interaction of playing prompts and responding with Bear upon-tones enables Fred to interact with the voicemail system easily.

If Fred presses 1 to listen to his message, the CPU looks up the location of Fred's new message in his mailbox directory (on the Organisation Disk), and directs the Disk Controller to play that bulletin. The Disk Controller finds the bulletin on the Message Disks, and sends the data stream direct to the Phone Interface. The Telephone Interface and so converts the data stream to audio and plays information technology to Fred through the Line Interface Card which Fred is connected to.

Playback controls (like rewind, pause, fast forward, changing volume, etc.) are all input via Touch-tones, are "read" by the CPU, and the appropriate actions are taken based on the stored program in the organisation. For example, if Fred wants to pause message playback, he might press 2. Since the CPU is constantly listening for Touch-tones from Fred, his command causes the CPU to direct the Disk Controller to end playing the message. A variety of playback controls and options are available on most sophisticated voicemail systems and so that users tin control bulletin playback, store messages in archives, send letters to groups, change their preferences, etc.

The improve designed voicemail systems have a user-friendly interface with clear and meaningful prompts so the interaction with the voicemail system is quick and piece of cake.

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