Alltel Wireless introduced a new application to let customers personalize outgoing voicemail greetings with the voices of Hollywood actors, comedians, singers and celebrity endorsers.

The wireless carrier is relying on Zed Company's 9 Squared mobile content provider to help with its Voice Max offering. Alltel customers can now select celebrity greetings for incoming calls to preface their own message.

"Obviously I believe it'll generate good word-of-mouth for Alltel," said Lucie Pathmann, director of communications at Alltel, Little Rock, AR. "I also think it's a great entry point.

"Text messaging is primarily the entry point for data services," she said. "The one thing that people do before that is sign up for their voicemail. So I think this is a great entry point to download other services."

The news comes soon after Alltel announced a promotion with the Penske racing team for its My Circle calling feature (see story). My Circle lets Alltel customers exchange calls with five, 10 or 20 numbers on any network.

Voicemail Max has content from Steve Harvey, Orlando Jones, T.I., Larry the Cable Guy, voices from Comedy Central's Reno 911, Warner Bros. and MTV Networks.

Available on select mobile phones, the service offers access to more than 500 audio clips.

"We're targeting our entire customer base," Ms. Pathmann said. "[But] we believe a younger demographic will be an early adopter of this service."

The application can be downloaded and previewed at no extra cost through the phone's menu. A single greeting costs $2.99. All greetings are generic. Content categories include Hip Hop celebrities, sports, business, cartoon, holiday and rock stars.

Alltel has more than 12 million wireless customers.

"We're about choice and control and giving the customer the ability to personalize their service," Ms. Pathmann said.