Some people love voice mail, many just hate it. Many are apparently so egotistical, they think it’s not worth listening to 2 minutes of a voice based message than a generic email.
People also think email is better, but do you know the history of voicemail?
if the answer is no, lets go down memory lane of Voice Mail.
Voicemail is often assumed to be an electronic answering machine on a server. While it’s true, its origins was almost similar to sending a letter or an email, just with spoken word.
The first indication of such language was in printed publications in 1877. A famous man named Thomas Edison with an invention called the phonograph. For the Gen-X audience and older, this is basically a record player. Millenials are probably familiar to just be cool for the latest trend. While it was well known for songs, the ability to record spoken word, as a way to replace letter writing had the possibility. The “voice mail” language was in the lexicon by the 1910s.
While the answering machine was invented in the 1960s, the ability to install these would be so cost prohibitive, and worse, a wiring nightmare. In the early 1970s, Motorola introduced pagers that provided one way voice messages that would be answered by an “answering center” (this in 2017 is completely archaic with the advent of digital telephony, automated attendants, in fact the size of these answering centers were the size of contact centers, which was not existent at the time.) These pagers used UHF signals and were often used for volunteer fire fighters, etc. In this sense, this could be considered as a voice message.
Before modern digital based private branch exchanges, and before the days of the Touch Tone dialing, answering machines were used mostly in consumer environments. Most of these answering machines would go off after several rings and record the message on audio tape, (microcassette or tape cassette or reel to reel.) On an enterprise level, this type of setup would be so costly, it was much cheaper to keep the existing setup of a bunch of secretaries setup (in today’s standards) a call center-like environment with Call Director telephone sets. No Call Director doesn’t mean CallMaster in the Avaya world, despite some similarities to appearance. The Call Directors had 18 to 20 something buttons monitoring extensions of the bosses, if there wasn’t activity the secretary would take the call by accessing that button on that set and leave those pink sheets called “While You Were Out” and put it in his mailbox or desk or other ways of delivering.
VMX – FAIL
Who claimed to be the “first” is just another high tech drama. The first looser in the attempt was a company called VMX (not to be confused with the extension of a VMware virtual computer file). VMX appeared to be an integrator, building their own stuff (allegedly) then repackaging them to a bunch of Fortune 500 corporations, according to Wikipedia, the names were such as 3M, Kodak, American Express, Intel, Hoffmann–La Roche, Corning Glass, Arco, Shell Canada and Westinghouse. The problem was they lacked the ability to market the product even further, and the customer base was considered to be early adopters.
The product was pretty finiky, the three-thousand user VMX/64 was known to have problems not taking calls from the outside lines, it was large, not thinking of the user in mind and inconsistent commands using touch tone dials. Not to mention a patent suit that helped matters. As a result VMX was a fail.
Delphi – FAIL
Delphi Communications tried a similar system in the early 1970s. Called the Delta 1, it would pickup inbound trunks (which is important if someone from outside that wanted to leave a message) It was another prototype, with no intention of being in their for the long run. They built three machines, one was put into use. An automated system, that didn’t require intervention in receiving messages was developed for use in a Los Angeles operation in 1981 called Delta 2. Delphi’s investor, Exxon Enterprises pulled the plug and shut the company down in July 1982.
The only legacy was patents, and it was transferred to an unrelated business to telephony within the Exxon enterprise
IBM – SUCCESS
Believe it or not IBM had some telephony DNA, in an very uptight business culture that diticated the company for decades . In 1973, their research and development labs developed the Speech Filing System, which was apparently the first “application” for voice messaging. The system used hardwired touch tone sets and human voice since mobile technology was non-existent and computer screens were for the very few. 750 IBMers in the US used the operational prototypes for their daily work. This ran beneath an IBM System/7 with a VM370 for storage.
The prototype was then converted to run on a Series/1 computer in 1978. In 1981, they started marketing the Audio Distribution System to American and European markets, and the first customer installation was in 1982.
ADS was both marketed by AT&T and IBM and was well used of such technology as IBM used human factor research plus observation of operational use. (Funny how they missed the GUI wave of the mid to late 1980s – with no research from computer users…)
ADS was a big beast, it could handle up to 3,000 users, 100 hours of messages, in multiple languages, message waiting information to a “host” computer and 16 simultaneous users. ADS was also available for exchange carriers (ala “The Phone Company”) with alternate hardware.
IBM installed the hardware for the 1984 LA Olympics, General Motors, and many European based corporations.
This may be the only 1 in the many failures in the early days.
Voice Response Inc’s “Response” to Voicemail – VM FAIL – IVR – SUCCESS
In 1985, Voice Response Inc, once known as Call-It-CO approached voice mail with IVR. IVR is not to be confused with the automated attendant as the open source people recklessly confused the public in the 2010s, as IVR actually takes the user’s voice and does what it want’s to do with it. The problem was back in the 1980s, algorithms for users dialects, that can range from one end to the other, and from sea to shining sea and border to border was not around to help make this product be another DOA. VRI moved to making the modern day IVR solutions and that helped in their cause.
Others
NeXT, Apple’s legacy acquisition and the blueprint to Mac OS X, had in their Mail.app client a feature called Lip Service. A user with a NeXT display (the fancy all integrated digital audio at a pretty penny) could speak to their monitor with an internal mic about thirty seconds of what they like or didn’t like about something into their email. Lip Service, like NeXT never caught on, and was never introduced in Mac OS X a decade later. However in iMessage for multimedia messages on the other hand kinda shares resemblance.
By the mid to late 80s, Northern Telecom, AT&T, and other PBX manufacturers developed their own voice mail systems, AT&T actually was an early innovator of “Unified Messaging”. Before AT&T sold UNIX, their UNIX distro had electronic mail capability, mix in their Audio Information Exchange (to most of us we call that AUDIX) a user can listen to emails or listen to voicemails on their terminal. 15 years later, Avaya and others would make that the standard. And AUDIX itself ran the UNIX platform till the mid 2000s when they moved it to an app-sized system using more conventional PC hardware.
The ROLM Corporation was the “disrupter” of the time digital PBX systems. Prior to 1984, ROLM was inching close to beating AT&T in PBX sales, due in large part of an integrated voicemail to telset solution. The first generation sets had integrated message waiting capability as well as references to the prompts on the phone’s designation strip. While IBM essentially destroyed ROLM, their legacy was still carried on by loyal users and companies well into the new century.
Octel was another leader in voice mail systems, by selling vendor agnostic voice mail carriers. Using analog ports or digital trunks, the Octels was set up systematically as a large answering machine, because the systems didn’t talk in the proprietary language like an AUDIX, or a Meridian Mail. Regardless, Octels were often found at the phone company to provide voice mail service through the carrier (or “the cloud” in today’s standards.)
Lucent bought Octel, and later when Avaya came to be, Octel was demoted as an app for their Modular Messaging systems and probably anyone involved in that company are probably retired due.
In the 1990s nearly a dozen companies were in the market for central office voicemail services as well, and with a few consolidations, the legacy still lives on with those entities.
Leave the message after the tone. Or is that a myth?
Voice mail isn’t just leave a message after the tone. In the height the voice mail use, people would log into their voice mail by it’s access number or if you were out of the office, you logged into an outside number) and check your voice mail. This is similar to the original Edison idea. You could reply by hitting a key, and the user would immediately be notified of a new message. You can always create a new voice mail instead of calling someone and assume they don’t pick up. You could forward a message to an appropriate colleague with a memo of what the subject matter is – ala email!
This practice is still used today, however apps like Unified Messaging and the integration to email inboxes makes it easier to remove or forward or place calls on your PC’s microphone and headphones.
In the technological sense, voice mail systems can range from 2 to 60 ports, not including open source voice mail systems. They are independent of the PBX, even if it’s made by the same vendor. The voicemail system has it’s own extensions or line numbers. By programming a key or PBX to route calls after a few rings, it will then transfer the call to a “phantom” or “dummy extension” that would route the call to the mailbox. The Mailbox itself in many setups are different to the phone system. Typically the information has to be entered separately on both systems. Those 2 to 60 lines on the voicemail side, has to the be programmed as telephones on the PBX side, some of this require metilcious attention to detail on what line appearance of what number goes to the voicemail system.
In short, a call is being placed to a PBX extension; it rings, rings, then it rings two more times; then it gets sent (or forwarded and the call is now handed off to the separate voice mail system) to a voice mail number that forwards to the mailbox number (set up from the PBX side), to go to the right one. User leaves a message and hangs up. The voice mail system will then a message to the PBX to then give a stutter dial tone, which typically signals the red, Message Waiting Lamp to indicate, and if a user picks up their set and hears a stutter dialtone in the beginning indicates a message was left. With Unified Messaging and the iPhone styled VOIP phones, more information such as how many unread messages can be seen without logging in. Similar setups are used in the carrier with some difference in programming and how the vendor’s voice mail system and carrier networks function for a lineman.
Legacy
The problem is so many people don’t want to be bothered. They don’t know the history, therefore they think it’s dead. Some think it’s anti social and will refuse to add ports to their network. The alleged mobility of all office users and the public opinion of voice mail being a guilty technology has essentially murdered the technology.
As the telecom job title is murdered as well, its getting more and more replaced by the IT mindset, whatever is hip and cool, you must deploy ASAP or else you’ll lose your job because you do not subscribe to the narrative of the IT industry. And now you are ill relevant only because of the obscenity of “group think” of what IT has become.