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by nradov 896 days ago
Many years ago, Sprint used to have a "text to landline" feature on their network. You could send an SMS from your phone and then their server would dial the landline and use a speech synthesizer to read out the text.
2 comments

From my experience in the UK most telecoms have the same system, although I've only ever used it by accident and each time it left the person on the other end confused.

At one point BT hired Tom Baker to use his voice on their TTS system. I'm sure more people would use it if they kept his voice: https://youtu.be/aFsOhJgCSpw

Actually I'm pretty sure that exists in the UK too, but nobody I know uses a landline any more. My parents have one, but they use their mobiles more often than not.