On the growing irrelevance of voicemail...

I thought it was just me, but alas, loads of people are thinking the same as well!

I'm talking about voicemail, for goodness sake! I have grown to dislike voicemail. It's cumbersome, often requiring me to press multiple buttons in order to repeat a message to get the point when the caller would mumble-jumble his/her number, and I have to fumble the same multiple buttons to hear it again. When you're on a cell phone and not on a headset, you would understand the level of angst and frustration.

Although I was somewhat surprised that other people, as many as 30% of them, as quoted in the New York Times article, who do not check their voicemail regularly, if at all. Oftentimes, I leave my voicemail unchecked for days. And you know, after the voicemail is left unchecked for a couple of days, and there are no further attempt to reach me - ie. other more intelligent attempts like email or text or IM, that can reach me more instanteously - I know those messages can be ignored.

With the cell phones getting smarter and more capable of handling emails, texting and others while one's on the road, I simply don't see why someone would hang onto voicemail.

I know, I know, there will always be some diehards who would cling on to their voicemail. Like the dying breed who still write letters, I bet the voicemail bunch will go into the history archive sooner than we think. Some day, we'll all look back, perhaps not so fondly, and show our grandkids how many buttons and clicks we have to go through in order to check voicemails, and we'll surely be told that voicemail belongs to the history.

Telcos have vested in encouraging more use of their data network, ala texting and some such, but it's something that a growing majority of customers want. For me, I just wish that voicemail would die.