New Voice SMS for Zimbabwean Telecoms?

So news gathered from a regional tech website  has it that a VAS offering, Voice SMS, is set to hit the local market before the end of the year through a yet to be identified service provider (or providers). This was mentioned by a representative from Kirusa, a global player in VAS and Mobile Social Media. The company confirmed in an interview with itwebafrica.com its move into three new countries; Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Zambia by the end of 2014 with the introduction of their product in the same period.

Voice SMS offers a simple platform to record and send voice messages to a desired subscriber number, as opposed to the usual text format. The technology has experienced notable success in other markets on the African continent largely because it is available to users of basic feature phones . It will be interesting to see how the local Network Operators will package and price such a service. Will there be a separate Voice SMS package or will it be bundled with other products such as voice and data solutions?

In all fairness the service has a lot of use, and anyone can easily be inclined to observe its huge benefits over the traditional text SMS. Its ability to capture vocal tone, stress and musical melody presents it as a great service for product and service promotion and this has huge revenue potential for our local carriers.

You can only imagine the numerous ad campaigns that many service providers, manufacturers, civic, political and religious organisations can craft with such a tool for delivery. We also cannot forget to mention the ripples it will definitely cause in Marketing and Public Relations circles where cost effective media is always welcome. Guess we better brace for a flood of promotional messages of products and services we might not be keen on in the first place.This just might disrupt our local operators’ love affair with the traditional paid for SMS package that has had its relevance affected by IM offerings from the many players in that field.