Does Avaline Add Something Useful to SL?

The most amazing thing about Avaline, SL's new service to allow inbound voice calls to inworld avatars, is that Linden Lab published a roadmap for it. Wow...

I am not sure though that having calls come into a sim will add to the immersion. Seems to me that we enter a virtual space in order to enjoy it and gain something from it that we can't get, er, on the phone. It just would seem to break the buzz if you're on the porno/narco/ultra-violence grid and you had to get into a big chat with your mom or something. But the flip side is that you can share your inworld time with people that are not onine.

Linden says this new feature will have "voice fonts" meaning you can disguise your voice to be a "French Woman, Sports Announcer, Elf, A.M. Radio, etc". I wonder if you can get special heavy breathing sounds? Voice font smiley w00ts?  So maybe the whole grid will sound like Carla Bruni and Howard Cosell?

Maybe they can add a little intercept message as the call gets sent into SL--"the person you are calling is taking your call via his or her avatar in Second Life where 15 billion miinues of voice are served. Your call is important please standby while we connect you."

But will this make experiences on  the grid more engaging? Or is just tossing more features into the pot and hoping it will get tastier?

I could see some interesting applications for this. You could have a virtual call center where avatars sit in virtual desks and take support calls for example. Their avatars can slump over while a call about how to uninistall Vista without screwing your computer is handled. A virtual call center manager can watch provide motivation. Or maybe more usefully some type of real product, like an Xbox or Sex Toys maybe, where the call center people could have access to a simulation of the product and then be able to use it or look at it while the caller is on the line. It would have to be really complicated things though otherwise a web page is still easier.