America Online on Wednesday unveiled its latest paid service, which lets subscribers listen to voice messages online and e-mails over the phone, putting it in competition with telephone companies delivering voicemail. The online division of AOL Time Warner has spent much of past couple of months creating new services, a high-speed product that comes out next week and finding ways to recharge growth as part of its turnaround strategy. Some of the results from those efforts are slowly being unveiled. AOL Voicemail, available on Wednesday, is the third premium service the company has launched in the past year.
"It lets all members get their important messages in one place," said Jeremy Verba, vice president and general manager of AOL"s voice services business. "Now when they are in their e-mail in-box, they can see all their messages at once--who"s calling, the phone number--and you can see the most important messages right away."
The service, which can log the last 100 calls and separate voice mails into up to seven separate boxes to correspond to different screen names, is targeted at busy small businesses or home offices and those that are always away from home and want access to all their messages via phone, Verba said.