Glo Adds New Features to Voice SMS Package

Globacom has announced the addition of four new features to the Voice Short Messaging Service (Voice-SMS), which it pioneered early 2007.
An official statement from the company listed the five new features on the service as “Save”, “Replay”, “Forward”, “Group Messaging” and “Reply”.
Explaining the new features, Samson Isa, the company’s head of Value Added Services (VAS), said a user can now save a Voice-SMS on his phone, replay it any time he chooses and also forward it to his friends and relations. He added that the group messaging feature enables the subscriber to send a voice message to a group of persons.
The four new features, according to him, complement the Skipping and Validity features added to the service recently. Skipping enables subscribers to select and listen to any desired mail out of the lot in his mail box, instead of listening to all, one after the other before he gets to listen to the desired mail. “With the service, the subscriber is able to skip some messages in order to listen to the intended mail,” he stated.
On the new Validity feature, Isa said it saves received voice messages for 10 days within which the recipient can still listen to them. This gives the subscriber the opportunity to read a message at his own time and discretion.
Globacom in February 2007 become the first telco in Nigeria to introduce Voice-SMS, a package which allows subscribers to record and send voice messages to recipients. The service is a “talk” and “listen” messaging alternative to the regular “type” and “read” service provided by simple SMS.
Isa said Glo Voice-SMS enables the user to add a personal touch to his message by recording his own voice and sending it to a recipient who in turn is able to listen to the voice of the sender. Thus, the new service has the advantage of conveying the sender’s mood, passion and emotion along with the voice message, which the conventional SMS does not do.
With the conventional SMS, a subscriber ‘types’ and ‘sends’ his text message, which is read at the receiving end, while the Glo Voice-SMS allows the user to ‘dial’, ‘talk’ and ‘send’ the recorded voice message which is listened to by the receiver.
He added that the service is not handset-dependent and is easier to use than SMS as the subscriber can effectively send a message without wasting too much time inputting text. It also offers the user the opportunity of recording his message in any language of his choice.
 “Voice builds on the benefits of SMS. For the text SMS, the sender most of the time has to be stationary. He also has to scroll menu to create message, ‘triple tap’ out a message and alternate between alphabets and numbers. But the Voice-SMS offers non-intrusive messaging, is convenient to use, offers ease of speaking when on the move and ability to communicate more with less effort,” Isa added.
Glo Voice-SMS service is available to both prepaid and postpaid subscribers on the Glo network and will be quite useful to youths, students, businessmen, companies and people who find the conventional SMS cumbersome as well as people with reading and writing difficulties, he noted.
Isa explained that a subscriber who wishes to use the service is required to dial the star key, followed by the recipient’s Glo mobile number, (i.e. *08051234567) and press call button to record the message. The sender has 30 seconds to record his message and is charged N15 per message sent.