From: R. Turner <[log in to unmask]>

As much as it is taken for granted, e-mail is still the reason why most
people decide to "go online." The consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers
verified as much in its four-nation 1999 Consumer Technology Survey
[(http://www.pwcglobal.com/extweb/ncpressrelease.nsf/DocID/E08266B81BE91F9A852568010063B693?OpenDocument)no spaces] of some 800 users in the
United States, England, France, and Germany. The survey found that some
48% of U.S. consumers said that e-mail was the main reason to use
the Internet, as opposed to the 28% who considered research the
main reason. These figures were roughly the reverse last year.
In England, 39% used the Internet for e-mail, and 37% used it for
research. The French and German users, however, were both more
likely to use the Internet for research. Another interesting finding
of the survey was that Americans (32%) were found to be more
concerned with the speed at which they can access the Internet,
while the English, French, and Germans combined (34%) were more
concerned with the costs related to Internet access. Moreover,
both Americans and Europeans combined (71% and 50% respectively)
prefer to access the Internet via basic phone lines.

A host of companies have been betting that people will still continue to
choose phones as useful communications devices, and have created some interesting applications that synchronize phone technology with Internet tools and services, such that we now can have voice mail, faxes, and
even telephone calls carried over the Internet as opposed to
traditional phone lines.

One of the "hot" trends in this area is called "unified messaging" (UM).
The idea behind UM is that traditional voice messages, faxes, pagers,
electronic mail, and other data types can be sent from their respective
devices to an account which can be accessed by any other device, such as
the telephone or the Web. Although the technology has been around for a
few years, advanced UM has been available almost exclusively in
corporate environments via higher-end expensive proprietary systems.
Where it has been visible to the general Internet public, it has usually
been limited to the ability to access multiple e-mail accounts from one
Web-based account, usually via a portal like Yahoo or the Microsoft
Network.

Probably the first full-fledged unified messaging services available to
a wide audience were the fax and e-mail coordination services. This
group includes outfits like MessageClick (http://www.messageclick.com),
eFax (http://www.efax.com), and jfax (http://www.jfax.com) that provide
users with a toll-free or free local access phone number to give to
people who want to send fax or voice-mail. The faxes and voice messages
are then forwarded to an e-mail account you specify, which can then be
viewed as graphics and text respectively.

The next level of UM services might include services such as
myTalk (http://www.mytalk.com), which lets users check their e-mail from
other accounts via Web. You might be saying, "so what? I can do that now
with any number of Web e-mail accounts." The service at myTalk is
different, however, in that you can also check e-mail from other
accounts via your phone. You call a toll-free number, enter in your
personal extension and password, and in a short amount of time, you can
listen to and receive e-mail. Plus you have the added benefit of a
voice-activated menu system that recognizes commands such as "send a
reply" and "dial a number." You reply to messages by saying your
response, which is then sent to recipients as an audio file attachment.

While you are on the phone, the service also lets you make free phone
calls to anywhere in the U.S., although you are limited to two minutes
per call. Your messages can also be accessed via a Web account with
myTalk. Recent upgrades now allow users to receive pager alerts when new
messages arrive, and automatically callback users who leave messages.
Other planned upgrades include a feature that alerts users via the phone
whenever a specific e-mail message arrives, and forwarding e-mail
messages from one inbox to another via phone. So for the price of
experiencing a few ads on both the telephone and Web interface, you get
a free collection and access point for your messages.

Another service, RocketTalk (http://www.rocketalk.com), lets users
record and read voice-based messages via their computers. You must first
download a small utility, and have a sound card, microphone, and
speakers on your machine. You then use the utility to record and send
your messages. If your recipients do not have the RocketTalk utility
installed on their machines, the central RocketTalk server automatically
attaches a special RocketPlayer application to the message to enable the
embedded audio.

So why all the fuss about UM? The best available numbers suggest that
there will be some 14 million paid subscribers to various UM services by
2002, generating some US$6.3 billion in revenue, according to
London-based Ovum Research (http://www.ovum.com). There is basically a
race between small companies attempting to put their technologies out in
the marketplace before larger telecommunications firms like MCI/Worldcom
and AT&T can provide their own services to existing customers. The small
companies believe that if they can provide useful free basic services,
they may be able to capture potential paid subscribers with premium
services before those same subscribers sign up for those services with
their telephone carriers.

In June, for example, telecommunications giant GTE in partnership with
communications networking firm Telcordia announced plans to deliver a
national unified messaging service, based on the Internet protocol (IP),
to be deployed over GTE's private, fast, high-capacity, fiber-optic
network. This service will be available for wholesale to the US service
provider market, including Internet Service providers (ISPs) and
resellers of telephone services to provide to their subscribers. While
not a free service, this will be targeted mostly towards small
businesses and organizations, home offices, and travelling
businesspeople between roughly about US$5-20 per month.

AmeriTech, Prodigy and Bell South are also working on similar services
for resellers. Some portals and online community sites, including Xoom (http://www.xoom.com) and FortuneCity (http://www.fortunecity.com)have incorporated elements of UM services into their offerings. Microsoft and Netscape have been working on UM technology solutions for their
Internet server products. And there is an ever-growing number of
startup businesses providing a range of related services.

So what is the next step for UM on the Web? One place to look would
be Onebox (http://www.onebox.com). Onebox lets users receive voicemail
and faxes via e-mail and to be notified via the ICQ instant messaging
tool whenever a new message arrives. Onebox will not "read"
the full text of faxes and e-mails over the phone. Rather than
providing the unique telephone access numbers that services like
eFax employ, Onebox allows users to dial a one general toll free number,
and then assigns them a unique four-digit extension. Each toll free
number hosted by the overall system can then support 10,000 users.
Onebox, which launched this July, lets users access their e-mail, voice-mail, and faxes from a telephone, regular e-mail account, or
Web-based e-mail without any additional software.

There are a few significant drawbacks with any consumer-oriented UM
service available online at this point. You have another phone number
and set of passwords involved in accessing your messages. Since many of
the companies are new, not all parts of the country (or world) will have
access to a local or toll-free phone number. This means that while the
fax might be "free" via the Internet, you might also incur long-distance
charges. Moreover these Web-based fax systems don't all operate off of a
common standard, which means that some users may need to utilize
inconsistent audio and graphics formats to send, receive, and read
messages sent by other users.

As new developments in UM technology are trotted out for the public
consideration, these services may not only provide more convenient and
efficient data delivery mechanisms. They may also lay the groundwork for
new systems that might provide wider (and cheaper) Internet access and
messaging options to individuals and groups who might otherwise be
hampered by geography or cost considerations.

Ryan Turner
NPT Project/OMB Watch


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