Did You Hear That E-mail I Sent You?

Sprint PCS is rolling out voice-enabled E-mail via its mobile phones. The service, which was developed with voice-activated-services firm HeyAnita Inc., lets customers receive and send E-mail for about $10 a month.

The service will tap E-mail from EarthLink, Yahoo, NetZero, Prodigy, and Sprint Wireless Web accounts. Subscribers press the asterisk and "talk" keys and "get my E-mail." E-mail missives will be automatically read aloud. Subscribers can reply in spoken words, which will be delivered as a WAV file.

According to Don Longueuil, a Cahner's In-Stat Group analyst, studies show that the bills of wireless subscribers using voice and data services are 20% to 30% higher than those with voice service alone.

That might be true of consumers, but business users are different, says TeleChoice consultant Jennifer Rosenberg. "A CIO is going to use a BlackBerry over a cell phone to retrieve E-mail, because BlackBerries deliver unified messaging," she says, giving them access to their corporate E-mail. True, says Longueuil, but this service is less costly than big BlackBerry setups, which could woo some corporate business.