Alltel Wireless announced in September that it had reached a deal with SpinVox to provide the voice-to-SMS conversion capability.
This Monday, the company launched its Voice2TXT service, which will be available at different pricing offers.

For a $4.99 monthly plan the subscriber will be allowed to have 20 voicemail conversions, with each additional conversion priced at 25 cents. For a $9.99 monthly plan the user gets 50 conversions and for $19.99 a month gets 100 conversions.

The feature allows subscribers to view the messages without listening to the voice messages. It also permits customers to store and forward converted messages as regular text messages. Subscribers can retrieve the original voicemails if they wish it, too.
The service is available on any Alltel Wireless handset that is SMS-capable.

The feature is expected to be well received as the Alltel Wireless’ subscribers will no longer be forced "to wait the opportune time to listen to a voicemail", as Craig Kirkland, director of messaging and voice services declared.

Last week, in Canada, Rogers Wireless and Cincinnati Bell had begun offering the service to postpaid wireless subscribers. Alltel is the first of the Big Five U.S. wireless service providers to offer the service to its customers.

The SpinVox service has been popular in Europe and also in Africa as it was recently introduced by South Africa's Vodacom. There is another voicemail-to-text service provider, Simulscribe, which markets its product directly to individual subscribers.