Simulscribe, one of a couple of speech-to-text transcription services designed primarily to let mobile phone users receive their voice mails as text in e-mails, could be a godsend for some. Others will scratch their heads and wonder why they would ever want to pay this much for the dubious benefit of being able to read rather than listen to voice mail.

Here's how it works. You set your mobile service to forward no-answer, busy and unavailable calls to a Simulscribe number. Simulscribe takes voice messages for you, transcribes them using speech-to-text transcription software and sends the text, embedded in an e-mail, to the address you specify in your account settings. You can also have them sent to you as SMS messages.

Accuracy of transcription varies, but in my testing, which I'll describe in a minute, it was fairly impressive. It's not perfect, but it looks to be good enough in most cases that you won't need to actually listen to the message - although the audio is optionally also included in the e-mail as an attachment, and you can call in and collect Simulscribe voice messages the old-fashioned way too.

For mobile users who have push e-mail service, this could be a real boon just because they will now no longer have to make a call to their voice mail service to ensure they see all incoming messages. Voice messages will be pushed out to them automatically along with the rest of their mail.

The reading versus listening part could also be useful. Scanning the text of a Simulscribe message to get its gist is undoubtedly faster than listening to the audio recording from beginning to end - especially if you're already an e-mail-centric person.

And for those who collect and read e-mail in meetings and other situations where it would be impolite or impractical to dial up and listen with a phone glued to your ear, it means, again, that you can get all your messages, including voice mails.

So how much is this worth? If you sign up now during Simulscribe's "fall special," you'll pay $30 a month for an all-you-can-eat plan that gives you unlimited messages. The Simul40 plan gives you up to 40 messages a month for $10. Or you can pay as you go - 35 cents per message.

The service works, theoretically, with any phone service that offers call forwarding and lets subscribers set no-answer, busy and unavailable call forward numbers. You must, of course, have call forwarding activated on your account. In some cases, it may mean paying extra. For example, Telus in Canada, where I live, charges $2 a month to add call forwarding to an account if it wasn't included in the original plan.

Simulscribe provides dedicated call-forward numbers for all U.S. area codes. Toll free numbers are also available, though not at the company's Web site - you have to call in to customer service. Simulscribe is launching in Canada with Canadian area codes in two to three weeks. It will add other countries by the first of next year.

The current call forward number on your phone may be the number for your service provider's voice mail service. Or you might have set it up to forward calls to your office or home number. When you sign up for the service, Simulscribe sends you instructions on how to change these settings.

In many cases, it's simply a question of keying in a code to call your provider, such as *004*1xxxxxxxxxx*11# - where the x's represent the ten-digit Simulscribe forward-to number. You key in the code, hit Send, and the phone sends the request to your provider to change the call-forward settings.