So you have called your friend, and they didn’t answer.  You know they don’t have the latest visual voicemail, and you don’t want to stick them with a voicemail, when a text is all that is needed.  There is a really simple solution for this.

You arrive at someone’s voicemail, and you hear their voice say, “please leave me a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. you can also send me a text instead, by pressing 8”

“What is this?” you think to yourself, and press the 8.

Then the generic voice comes on and says, “please say your message at the tone and when you are finished, press the pound key”

You say your message, “this is Peter. if you want to hang out tonight give me a ring.” You press pound.

The computer voice then says, “here is your message” – (and then, still in the generic voice you hear he or she say) “this is Peter. if you want to hang out tonight, give me a ring. if this is correct press pound, if not, please press star.”

You press pound.

The generic voice then says, “your SMS text message has been sent”

The program converts voice to text, and then to demonstrate to you, the caller that the message is correct, it converts text back to voice, and states the message to you. This technology already exists, but as a voicemail option, it does not yet exist. I would contribute 300.00 to bring this idea to market.