Jeremy Wohl

Where's progress on the phone part of the phone?

When the iPhone got deposited here from the future and came with visual voicemail I thought hot damn, Steve Jobs has finally broken the logjam of voice innovation, and here's a little tease. We'd been tantalized for years by glimpses of alternate phone companies in the guises of Skype, various VoIP outfits, and eventually Google Voice. Can Apple get the behemoths to invent?

So I waited anxiously for updates in the iPhone's "Phone" app. And then ... silence through another two years and two major releases. Here's some contact search for ya. Hey, now we'll tell you how long your calls were!

Mobile networks are digital. They have roughly the same opportunities for layering hot new features as does any VoIP offering. I'd pay for most of the following ideas. My phone-use heavy friends (aka biz/dev, sales) would be jumping and salivating.

• Let me add global numbers to my phone. They all work the same, but I get local digits in SF and NYC, for instance. When I visit London, I grab a +42 for a month.
• Give me an infinite voicemail box (can you believe we still have limits in our voicemail?) and the features that are now VoIP ubiquitous: visible on the web, portable digital files, email forwarding, transcriptions and pitch-neutral fast-play
• Add a digital fax to my cell account. Alerts and viewing when I receive. Integrate with software: any emails or documents can be faxed outbound.
• Get rid of 3-way calling. Let me grow ad-hoc conferences to any size. That don't die when I hangup. Options to archive (and transcribe) on the web.
• Ala Google Voice: screen calls with a prompt and move calls to other phones.

Advanced:

• When I'm on hold, filter the music and alert me when a human speaks.
• Build a visual map of phone menu trees as I hear them. Touch to jump around, the phone doing all the boop-bip legwork.
• End-to-end encryption. (You know, I only want the government listening to my over-the-air calls.)

So now you have the command center of a small businesses. Or your sales team.

Except for the advanced items, this is all marginal cost and tech. And yet high value. People would pay.

Now I'm sure Apple and Google are waiting for the deep mobile network neutrality that lets them build their own VoIP-based kingdoms on top. All data, no "voice" as we know it. But this is years away.

I know, let's innovate on pricing plans!