What am I missing: Phone-based Visual Voice Mail
Admittedly, I don't know the intricacies of the manufacturer/carrier relationship, but it's my understanding that the primary reason Apple needed to partner with a specific cellular service provider for the iPhone is that the carrier's network needed to be customized to support random-access visual voice mail. If that's the reason (and the only reason, for example, Cingular isn't also subsidizing the cost of the iPhone), are there practical considerations for not making voice mail phone-based instead of having it reside on Cingular's central servers? While the iPhone doesn't have and extraordinary amount of memory, an incoming caller's message would only need to be recorded in mono at 32kbs. Caller ID and one's Address Book data provide all the information necessary to provide the visual meta data, and it would create a number of unique opportunities. For one thing, users would be able to check their voice mail without needing to have cell reception or using any minutes. Also, it'd make it possible for the iPhone to automatically forward any messages via e-mail to one's computer. Lastly, it'd be possible to record different outgoing messages for different callers. In my estimation, the idea is all plusses and no minuses, so what am I missing?
Comments
you would still need a carriers assistance in setting up some sort of call recording.. and then pushing that recording to the phone memory for storage once the phone is back in range or switched back on.
the cost of that "push" would likely cost the end user as well.
no matter how you do it, there seems to be a compromise to be made.
assuimg you are out of range to recieve the message in the first place... where does the recording get stored?
Very, very good point. Didn't think about that. Well, so much for that idea.