"Innovative" Bell steals 5 year old ideas from VoIP

Well this one I just can’t resist. Bell made a big deal out of a press release today trumpeting their “new”, service offering. Get this, voicemail-to-email! Wow! Welcome to 2002 Bell!

Ok, so their a little slow. I can accept that. In fact I probably wouldn’t even have paid any special attention to the article if it wasn’t for the fact that Mark Langton, a spokesman for the company was actually quoted saying “There’s still innovation being done here,”.

I really hope he didn’t say that with a straight face. They rip off an idea that has been in use by VoIP providers for years and then claim Bell is the innovator. One thing they didn’t borrow from VoIP, the price. The Bell service costs anywhere from $3 to $13 extra.

Next Bell will hold a press conference and tell us they invented the internet. I can see Mark explaining it now, “it’s like a series of tubes…”

[official press release]  or [CBC story]