The service enables voice messages, e-mail, and faxes to be received at a single mail box.

Bezeq launched its unified messaging service yesterday. The service, called OneMail, enables subscribers to receive voice messages, e-mail, and faxes at a single mail box. It is based on a platform of Israeli company CTI², which won the contract after a much-publicized legal battle with Comverse (Nasdaq: CMVT).

The platform allows the various kinds of messages to be accessed via computer or mobile telephone. The service costs NIS 9.90 per month. The project is estimated to have cost Bezeq several million shekels.

Telecommunications equipment producers like Comverse, whose core business was voice mailboxes and which was looking for new growth engines, held out great hopes in the past for unified messaging services. The main idea of such a service is that the subscriber can receive through any means, whether portable computer of mobile telephone, any kind of message. However, the service gained ground only slowly in all parts of the world, including in Israel.

Bezeq's service enables subscribers to hear, for example, e-mail messages in Hebrew or English via Text To Speech technology without being connected to the Internet.

CTI² provides unified messaging services to several telecommunications companies. It is due to replace all of Bezeq's voice mailboxes during 2004.