If there was ever a reason to jump from whatever cell phone ship you’re on and switch to Alltel, this is it. The Arkansas-based service provider has teamed up with Spinvox to provide Voice2TXT service, which enables customers to have their voicemails converted to an SMS text message. It eliminates the need to dial into voicemail to retrieve messages, and important messages that include numbers, addresses, etc. won’t need to be transcribed.

The service won’t come free to Alltel customers, however. They’ll first need a text messaging-capable phone (are there cell phones out there that don’t have this capability?) and then they will be paying a good little chunk for conversions. Plans include a $4.99 per month for 20 conversions, $9.99 for 50 and $19.99 for 100. Additional conversions over one’s subscription incur a per conversion fee. It’s all very reminiscent of the pricings for text messaging when it first came out.

One can imagine two things: first, this service is going to catch on and become available with the other major carriers; second, the price is going to come down, as it did for text messages. For the moment, Alltel alone deserves credit for considering customers who want a discreet way to access their voice messages.

Ben Hardy - Contributing Writer

Between watching re-runs of the The Jetsons and convincing his Insteon and Z-Wave controls to get along, Ben Hardy is immersed in the world of home automation, home control, and home networking.