Telephone companies are promoting voice mail as an alternative to the answering machine  By recording messages from callers when a subscriber does not have access to his or her telephone, voice mail provides a service similar to that of an answering machine
The companies promoting this service argue that it will soon make answering machines obsolete, since it is much more convenient, more flexible, and less expensive than an answering machine
Once a telephone customer decides to subscribe to voice mail, that customer can cancel the service at any time.