Technology Story: Freedom for Prisoners of VoiceMail

I read this article from New York Times' Technology section from February 15. It was called "Freedom for Prisoners of Voice Mail. I found it an interesting article and concept, but had a few issues with the story's style. First off, the lead really got my attention, although I was a little confused about the point of the article until the 4th graf. Second, I thought I was going to learn about something that would save me time & money from the lead. However, towards the end of the article, when you finally learn details about the service it's discussing, I realized that this service was probably going to cost MORE than just calling to check my voicemail. The average time I spend on checking voice mail on my cell phone is one to two minutes. With my Cingular 2000 nation plan with rollover minutes, I pay $0.20/minute (excluding the ambiguous fees & taxes), and $0.40/min on overage (although it's hard to go over 2000 minutes on a cell phone unless you use it daily for business). So I spend about $0.40 each time I check my voicemail, if I have multiple messages. I would have to check my voicemail 20 times per month just to pay for the service. I don't see how inconvenient it is to hold the 1 key and listen to my messages. A praise, I also thought the numbered points helped to keep me reading this really long article. It is also a thorough review of the service. Overall, informative, but a little unfocused.

By the way, I don't feel like a prisoner of my voice mail, but maybe the fact that we HAVE to have documentation and be connected others at all times frightens me.