Singapore Telecommunications (SingTel) said on Tuesday it has expanded the convenience of the popular Short Message Service (SMS) to home and office phones with the advent of a new text-to-speech system.
When an SMS message is sent to a fixed-line phone, the new system will read out the text when the call is answered, SingTel said in a statement.
If the call is not immediately answered, the system will continue calling at intervals for a 24-hour period.
SMS has proved hugely popular in Singapore where the mobile networks handle an estimated 15-million messages a day for a total population of just four million people.
SingTel, the largest telecoms company in the region, said it would also have available from next month fixed-line phones with a display panel to show SMS messages.
The phones would be capable of sending SMS messages to fixed line and mobile devices.
”In the past, our customers on the fixed-line network could only send SMS messages via the Internet,” SingTel’s vice president of consumer products, Hui Weng Cheong, said.
”We believe that our new service will appeal greatly to them because SMS offers both convenience and discretion.” – Sapa-AFP