Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch is saying exactly what I’ve been saying for a while now: voicemail is dead.  His reasoning is pretty straightforward, but it basically boils down to email is far superior and voicemail is simply irritating.  It’s days as a productivity tool have long passed.

I would actually go further.  Why have phones on your desk at work at all?  If the people in your company carry cellphones, especially a new iPhone, they have a tool that can do IM, email, web browsing, and SMS.  If having a real PBX phone system is important to your company so that everyone’s phone number looks the same, just forward those numbers along to everyone’s cell phones.  The amount of money people spend on buying expensive desk phones, especially for people who don’t spend their day using the telephone, is staggering and tremendously wasteful.

Once you know that everyone has a cellphone, voicemail becomes pointless.  If I don’t pick up?  Text me.  Use the same number.

© Stanton for Stanton Champion, 2008. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: iphone, telephones, voicemail

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