Vonage's enhanced Vonage Visual Voicemail now is available, and strikes me as more than visual voicemail, though there is not an elegant way to describe the feature. It is a premium service that transcribes voicemail into email. Most visual voicemail features put a message into a user email inbox, but do not provide transcription into text.
Voicemail transcripts can be sent to up to five email addresses at the same time, and to a user mobile phone using text messaging. The service costs $0.25 for each transcribed voicemail (plus applicable network fees for wireless text messages).
Some observers have been suggesting that Vonage do more in the "rich features" area and stop flogging the "lower price" angle for some time, so they will see this as a step in the right direction. I don't know offhand how long a voice message can be, but there are times when it might be really handy to have a transcript. Lists of things come to mind. Street addresses and phone numbers. Driving directions.
