Does Apple Live Voicemail work properly on YOUR cell plan?

[DaveWT]

I am on Koodo and was all excited about Live Voicemail. In fact I used it a couple of times. But in investigating today, I found out that when I called my iPhone from another phone:
1. I did not hear my personal greeting I had set up for voicemail - instead a generic Koodo supplied greeting.
2. When I left a test voicemail, later I could not retrieve it on my iPhone. "You have no messages".

I found a Koodo support document that says Live Voicemail "messes with normal voicemail functions." (my wording of their wording!)

https://www.koodomobile.com/en/help/voicemail Pull down the heading "Apple Live Voicemail - for iPhone users" to get the gory details.

Thinking it was a budget carrier deal I looked into Telus plans and found a similar support document so even full Telus doesn't work with Live Voicemail. https://www.telus.com/en/support/article/apple-live-voicemail You have to dig a bit here to find out that your "normal" voicemail experience is degraded, just as with Koodo.

That makes me wonder if any of our other plans available locally work properly with Live Voicemail. And this is in spite of this article:

Canadian carriers won't be able to ruin iOS 17's 'Live Voicemail'

Apple's iOS 17 will introduce Live Voicemail, a feature that can transcribe incoming voicemails. The feature will be carrier agnostic.

mobilesyrup.com

 

[chas_m]

This may sound odd, but Live Voicemail has NOTHING to do with your provider's voicemail, so in short -- none of the carriers know what they are talking about with it yet. Perhaps you have confused it with Visual Voicemail, which is a product they actually offer.

The way live voicemail works is that Apple *intercepts* the call, provides a generic greeting, and transcribes the message. If you DON'T pick up, it will then use your carrier's voicemail service to leave the message it intercepted.

Visual Voicemail is a service premium carriers offer, which I doubt any budget carrier would offer (but I don't know that for a fact) for an extra charge. How Visual Voicemail works is that the carrier's voicemail answers the call when you don't, and makes a (crude) transcription of what they said that you can look at on your iPhone to help you determine if you need to call them back. I have that service on my Rogers phones (work and home) and works reasonably well if the connection is clear and the caller doesn't mumble.

Mobile Syrup's article is accurate.

 

[DaveWT]

Both Koodo and Telus plans offer Visual Voicemail which I do NOT subscribe to. Their support articles both claim that Apple's Live Voicemail interferes with their normal voicemail offerings and I have found that to be the case. When I turned off Live Voicemail in my iPhone's settings, and called my iPhone from another phone, I then did hear my personal greeting, could leave a message and later retrieve it from my iPhone. With Live Voicemail turned on in my iPhone, when I call it from another phone I get a generic greeting rather than my greeting, I can go through the steps of leaving a message, but when I go to retrieve it later on my iPhone I am told "no new messages". So the Koodo and Telus support documents are describing exactly what I am experiencing.

I am asking if anyone with iOS 17 installed and Live Voicemail turned on has actually tried leaving themselves a test message (from another phone) and seen whether their voicemail service is disrupted or not.

 

[chas_m]

This sounds like a problem with Koodoo and Telus. If the Live Voicemail call is not picked up, the system should then forward the recorded message on to your carrier's voice mail. I guess they haven't upgraded their systems to be compatible with it yet.

I haven't tested the feature myself, but when I get a moment I'll do so and report back on how Rogers handles it.

 

[DaveWT]

I haven't tested the feature myself, but when I get a moment I'll do so and report back on how Rogers handles it.

That will be great to hear about. I need to spend more time turning Live Voicemail back on and running more tests. And I guess I should keep looking at Koodo support documents on this subject to see if they make any improvements.

 

[Anne]

I was disappointed to hear that Live Voicemail does not work with Koodo. However, I gave it a test run this morning, and it worked like a charm. You of course have to turn the feature on in settings.

The bonus is that when I checked my voice message there is an option to left swipe to delete the message.

 

[DaveWT]

I was disappointed to hear that Live Voicemail does not work with Koodo. However, I gave it a test run this morning, and it worked like a charm. You of course have to turn the feature on in settings.

The bonus is that when I checked my voice message there is an option to left swipe to delete the message.

Yes, but I would bet your Koodo voicemail greeting wasn't presented. I have done more testing and Live Voicemail does seem to be working well enough other than that. I was surprised that when I made a test call to my iPhone, did not answer, and did not intercept the message as it was being left, Koodo told me "no messages" but I did discover the left message appeared on my phone. Earlier I had been left to believe that if you don't interrupt the leaving of a voicemail by the caller, it then does get passed on to your cell provider for their voicemail system to handle. This does not appear to be the case for Koodo at least and all voicemails seem to end up on my phone for me to play back as you described.

 

[Anne]

Exactly right ! The greeting was generic and non-personal. I further tested it this morning by having my husband call me, and was able to see the transcript and pick up to have a conversation. No messages in the carrier voicemail, only on the phone as you indicated. Also, the sound quality was quite compromised - could barely hear the message when I played it back. Great idea that I will now abandon.

Thanks for the head-up Dave, I hadn't taken the time to fully test.

 

[chas_m]

PS. It works as advertised on Rogers.

 

[DaveWT]

I have turned Live Voicemail back on and successfully retrieved a voicemail left. Previously I was trying to find such voicemails on the Koodo system but they seem to be retained on my iPhone now.