Yahoo has advised that the previously discussed Yahoo Messenger with Voice will be finally available in the USA on Wednesday. Gosh, where I am it’s Wednesday almost, being in Philadelphia on a family matter.
The service is much like Gizmo or Skype, featuring In/Out and buddy list integration, but it goes much further by blending in the features of news headline delivery, Yahoo Music, access to Yahoo e-mail and more .
For $2.99 a month or $29.90 a year, people can select a personal phone number, and receive incoming calls at no additional charge.
On another related subject Yahoo has denied they are buying Gizmo or SipPhone.
Om has some comments and Reuters has the story.
I was able to sign up last night and score a phone number. Purchase was simple and easy, and as fast or faster than adding a Skype feature.
What I didn’t see so far. None of the ringtone or integration with Yahoo entertainment properties. Being on the Mac I also didn’t see any ability from the web management site to do simple find me, follow me type of service, but unlike Skype VoiceMail is free and a standard feature. It places the mail inside your Yahoo mail account. That’s a feature I hope they let me customize as I’d rather have one of two features, the ability to go to any e-maill address or the ability to create a new Yahoo mail account specifically for it.
I fully expect Yahoo to roll out more features and integrate more of their content into the the telephony service as time rolls on.