Should Telcos Provide Free Voicemail As Disaster Relief?
We’ve all heard the stories: whenever there’s any kind of disaster, phones (both landlines and mobile) become pretty much useless. The latest example where this was seen was with the bombings in Mumbai, India — but it’s a story that’s been seen many times before. Following Hurricane Katrina, former telco exec Tom Evslin and VoIP pioneer Jeff Pulver started talking about a simple way to at least minimize this problem. They suggested to the FCC that telcos should simply set up free voicemail accounts for those whose phone lines were impacted by the disaster. It’s a relatively simple plan. Basically, phone numbers that are unreachable will automatically go to a voicemail account. If the person associated with the phone number can access a phone somewhere, he or she can leave a message letting everyone know how they are. Family and friends can then easily leave messages, rather than repeatedly trying to contact a phone number that is unreachable. It would be easy enough for this all to ta
