Digital Trends

The division between real and virtual worlds becomes thinner and thinner. Beginning today on a one-month trial, BT will let your avatar on Second Life make 10 free phone calls – each lasting up to an hour – and send 10 text messages to the real world using its Avatalk service.

 

Users can either use the red BT phone boxes, or they can obtain a heads-up display allowing them to make calls from a number of locations.

 

Matt Brotherton, project manager at the Applied Technology Centre in BT's chief technology office, told silicon.com,

 

"What we've been able to do is open it up completely, so Second Life users can call and send SMS to anyone else in the world. For Second Life users, it's quite compelling…We're looking into how virtual-world environments can provide real business benefits to our enterprise, corporate and SME customers, from the perspective of providing collaborative environments internally but also as new channels to their customers."

 

Avatalk is hosted by five islands on Second Life - Idearium, Italy Island Resort, Venice Italy, Style Magazine and Nuova Sicilia.