Telstra’s business customers will be the first in Australia to take advantage of a new service that converts voicemails to text messages.

Subscribers to the new Voice2Text service will have their voice messages sent as a text message to their mobiles, letting them read voicemail messages, as well as listen to them. Voice2Text subscribers will also see the caller ID on messages, so they can see at a glance who left the message, and then call or text back straight away.

Telstra Group Managing Director, Ms Deena Shiff, said that the service would be available to Telstra’s business, government and enterprise customers from the end of November and was set to help people better manage their communications.

Telstra is partnering with UK company, SpinVox, to bring the voice to text technology to Australia. At the heart of the SpinVox service is its Voice Message Conversion System (VMCS), which works by combining computer-based state-of-the-art speech technologies with a live-learning language process.

SpinVox Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer, Mr Daniel Doulton, said “we expect Telstra’s business customers will find Voice2Text a simple and valuable way of controlling and improving their daily communications and it will soon become an essential tool in helping them get the most out of their busy lives” .

Business customers will have the choice of three pricing options: AU$10 for 25 messages, AU$20 for 80 messages or pay as you go at 55 cents per message. Telstra will look to make Voice2Text available to its consumer customers in 2008.