Voicemail doesn't work on the AT&T iPhone. Image courtesy of Albert Poon.
Voicemail sucks. The iPhone’s visual voicemail was supposed to fix many of the issues with voicemail. But in the U.S. it relies on AT&T’s network, which also sucks.
I regularly receive voicemail notifications hours to a day after the message was left. I guess I’m lucky: friends report that it takes multiple days or they can’t access voicemail at all.
Here’s a workaround, if you have a spare Google Voice account: set up your iPhone to forward unanswered calls to Google Voice. Then, when you get a voicemail it will be transcribed and converted to an email. You can also access the voicemail through the mobile version of Google Voice. (Too bad there isn’t a Google Voice app for the iPhone.)
Go to the dialer on your iPhone and do the following, replacing 4155551234 with your Google Voice number.
- Enter *61*4155551234# and press call.
- Enter *62*4155551234# and press call.
- Enter *67*4155551234# and press call.
After each of these steps, you’ll get a confirmation screen indicating that the feature was turned on. Don’t use the call forwarding option in the iPhone setup screen or all your calls will go straight to Google Voice.
Be sure to turn on the “do not disturb” feature of Google Voice.
There are a few downsides to this approach:
- Callers may have to wait longer as the iPhone rings and then Google Voice rings.
- Unless you’ve uploaded your address book to Google, you won’t see the name of the caller. (You will see the phone number.)
- The Google Voice transcriptions are largely useless, but then again it’s a feature you didn’t have before.
On the plus side, you’ll be to archive and email the voicemail messages and you’ll have much faster access to them.
Thank you for the suggestion, and for letting me know I am not the only one with slow vmail notifications on AT&T and iPhone.
Comment by Peter Howley — August 27, 2009 @ 7:53 pm