Product: Voice Mail System Developers: Boaz Misholi, Kobi Alexander, Prof. Yechiam Yemini Company: Comverse Year of Foundation: 1982
Who remembers the answering machine of old? A cumbersome device with reels of recording tape that was attached to the telephone and allowed us to receive and record messages.
In 1982, Boaz Misholi, Kobi Alexander and Prof. Yechiam Yemini founded ‘Efrat Future Technology’, a company that developed a technology for digital voice recording. The company, that later became the successful brand ‘Comverse’, was the first Israeli corporation bought by an American company (in 1997) and one of the few Israeli companies to have the honor of being included in the Wall Street S&P 500 Index as well as the NASDAQ.
Comverse identified the potential of the developing mobile networks and, based on the knowledge accumulated at ‘Efrat’, developed a 3LOG voice mailbox system for this market. The voice mailbox provided a user experience similar to the old answering machine (remote operation, personal greeting, storage of messages), without the need to purchase a separate device that requires complicated operation. Henceforth, the answering machine was not only included in the telephone but also simple and convenient to operate.
The ‘Golden Age’ of voice mail arrived with the expansion of mobile services that began in the 1990’s. Voice mail systems were integrated into the mobile networks, made life easier for the users, and helped the network operators maintain the amount of incoming calls while at the same time even increasing the outgoing calls
when subscribers ‘returned’ the calls they had missed previously.
A further boost to voice mail services was provided by Apple who included a voice mail app in the iPhone, making it more immediately available and intuitive.
As the concept’s creator and developer, Comverse led voice mail to its zenith by providing service to hundreds of mobile companies around the world, a service still used today by hundreds of millions of subscribers globally.
At its peak, the company employed thousands of people in Israel and abroad. In 2015, the company changed its name to XURA and was recently sold to an investment fund in the United States.
