Lucent Technologies Inc.’s Octel Messaging Division introduced the first product in its unified messaging portfolio, Message Notifier, which provides cross-notification of messages from different mediums.
Message Notifier, jointly developed with Bell Emergis, a division of Bell Canada, gives subscribers the ability to receive notification of new e-mail messages from their voice mailbox and vice versa. When using the Internet, subscribers can view detailed descriptions of their voice and fax messages by logging onto their service provider’s Message Notifier Web site.
Users with a multimedia personal computer can hear their voice-mail messages, reply to the message, then return to e-mail messages, said Karna Gupta, vice president of enhanced services for Bell Emergis.
A graphical user interface on the Web site also can be used to create, edit and delete voice-mail distribution lists. Eliminating the need to log off an Internet session to check voice-mail is an additional bonus for Internet users with only one telephone line, said Lucent.
While the Message Notifier only has wireline applications today, the companies expect a wireless version to be commercially available within the next year.
Bell Canada plans to launch the service in the fall, first on its wireline network, creating a marriage between a subscriber’s desktop phone and computer. General availability of Message Notifier is slated for the first quarter of 1999.
“Definitely downstream there’s going to be wireless applications,” said Bell Emergis’ Gupta.
“The wireline-wireless integrated mailbox is already up and running internally (at Bell Canada). My feeling is that in the next 12 months we’ll be there.”
Targeted to reach 100 percent of a service provider’s subscriber base, Lucent’s unified messaging product allows subscribers and carriers to “pick and choose how to define their level of unified messaging to include all the ways you can combine two or more mediums,” said Maggie Foresee-Griese, director of marketing communications for the Service Provider Messaging Group at Lucent.
Service providers say only 5 percent to 15 percent of their subscriber base are “premium or power users,” and that only a portion of that segment is willing to pay extra for a single, unified mailbox, Foresee-Griese said. Additionally, there are four voice-mail subscribers to every e-mail subscriber, said Lucent.
Instead of forcing carriers and subscribers into the all-or-nothing scenario of a single mailbox, Lucent’s AnyMedia Messaging solutions concept allows cross-notification of messages, or a consolidated mailbox, with a portfolio of products to allow carriers and subscribers to work up to a truly unified messaging solution.
The low-end Message Notifier product is designed to let carriers enter the segment with low risk on its existing network hardware, and to let subscribers define what level of message unification is right for them, Foresee-Griese explained.
