Voicecom (Booth 113) announced the availability of a Message Waiting Indicator (MWI) feature to complement its wholesale residential and business voice mail offerings in seven local access transport areas (LATAs). This feature alerts users to messages in their voice mail with a stuttered or broken dial tone after the users pick up the phone or see a blinking light on the phone handset.

MWI is available to Voicecoms wholesale partners in Atlanta, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Detroit, Houston and Los Angeles.

MWI gives our wholesale partners a level playing field when competing against the Bell companies, says Frank Paterno, director of product management at Voicecom. Previously, the Bells had an added advantage because CLEC companies could not offer MWI, which is a feature many consumers require from a voice mail service. Now, our partners are able to offer consumers what they need and want.

MWI can be ordered with a new service or added to an existing service without the end user experiencing a service interruption. In addition to the MWI feature, Voicecom offers other notification methods including pagers, SMS and message delivery to e-mail. Voicecom will continue to add MWI in other areas based on demand from its wholesale partners.

Voicecoms voice mail service provides a digital mailbox to capture voice messages from multiple phones, including wireline or wireless. By adding enhanced features like Spanish prompts, subscribers to the service are able to receive instructions in a foreign language. In addition, Voicecom makes it possible to send a copy of the voice mail message to the subscribers e-mail address.