Voce looks like an interesting new virtual cellular carrier, despite a marketing campaign targeted at rich idiots. A $500 signup fee gets you a no-contract, unlocked handset (mostly stupid blinged out phones from Dolce and Gabbana, but also regular old Treos and the like) and then $200 a month gets you unlimited voice calls and GPRS data, and a 24/7 personal assistant service you get by dialling 611. The PAs are guaranteed to pick up within three rings and will research any question that can be answered by the web or phones, including stumpers like, “Call a research librarian and ask them to look up the opening sentence of every chapter in Robert A Heinlein’s ‘Starship Troopers'” or “Find me a restaurant in Tulsa that serves vegetarian food that can seat a party of 18 before 8:30PM” and so on. They’ll call, email, fax or text you with the results.
The service is clearly targeted at people who think that a gold phone and the ability to boss around a researcher is cool, but I’m thinking that $200 a month isn’t bad for unlimited calling and data (I already spend that much or more a month with my regular cellphone) plus the gravy of a part-time personal assistant service that’ll wait out hold queues, check stuff for you on the road, and run the kind of routine research tasks you might have to hire a full-time staffer to do otherwise. What’s more, the premium services — like free loaner phones with call-forwarding when you’re travelling in Asia, free insurance, next day handset replacement — are all things that I presently end up paying money for.
When I called the general number, I got someone smart, thorough, pleasant and helpful — on the second ring. When’s the last time that happened with your mobile carrier? It’s certainly not par for the course with Verizon, who I pay a gigantic sum of money to every single month and who still make me wait for 40 minutes and then treat me like dogshit every time I call, unless I’m actively threatening to switch carriers.