What happens when you text a landline?

Today's young generation is so used to texting one another from cell phone to cell phone, but what happens when you accidentally text a landline?

You're on your way home and remembered there was something you were supposed to pick up from the corner store. So you send a text to your spouse. Except you accidentally sent the note to your home phone instead of your significant other's cell phone. What will happen?

The answer? The person at home will receive an audio version of your text message when they pick up (or will be left as a voicemail message). Yep, a human-like voice will read your text message to the person at home.

Sync asked each of the three big cell phone providers how the process works and the costs involved.

Rogers

The service is called "TXT 2 Landline." Simply type a text message from your wireless phone and enter the 10 digit phone number in the "TO" field (as you would with a regular text message). The recipient's phone will ring and when it is answered your text message will be automatically read to them. If no one answer, the transcribed text message will be stored as voicemail (if they have a voicemail service). Recipients can also reply to the text message and leave a message for you.

Telus

A Telus rep told us the process is the same for their subscribers. Called "Telus Text to Landline," you'd type a text as you would normally but send it to a landline and the person who answers will hear a transcribed version of the message. If no one picks up, it's stored as a voicemail message. It doesn't matter which company the recipient uses for a landline, such as Bell or Rogers.

Bell

Called "Text to Landline," Bell's service also works with any 10-digital landline in Canada or the U.S. Any Bell Mobility customer with a text messaging-capable phone can use text to landline messaging. This service will even translate many text shortcuts (acronyms and emoticons) that are commonly used in text messaging to voice, such as "LOL," which will be read as "laughing out loud."

OK, so how much?

Sending a text to a landline incurs the standard text messaging rates for the sender (not recipient), therefore it's 15¢ per message sent (or will count as 1 text message sent if you have a bundle).

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