Visual voicemail that hard to make work for all phones?

Jugernot

Diamond Member
Oct 12, 1999
6,889
0
0
Seems to me all cell phone companies should be able to come up with a simple visual voicemail system based off of the text message system. Here's how I see it working, tell me if it's flawed logic (it could be...)

My wife calls my cell and leaves a message on voicemail. My cell company uses her callerid data and sends my cell phone a silent text message (which is transparent to the user). The same thing happens for 5 other calls thoughout the day, each time storing the callerid data in my phone.

You push an option on your phone and it brings you to a screen with the data listed, your phone already contains all of the callers info and could display it all on a screen very similar to the iphones visual voicemail. This should work 99% of the time, but say you had your phone turned off. It gets the messages when first turned on or when you check your voicemail. It connects automatically and downloads the caller data and displays the info. You select a caller and it connects automatically to the message you want to check. Delete a voicemail would work much the same way as checking.

Your phone would show pictures/info using the callerid data on the voicemail screen.

My cell company had the option to send me a text message everytime someone left me a voicemail..... but it didn't have the callerid data in it.

This is all possible using existing data found on nearly all cell companies networks.

Why hasn't something like this happened?

 

GeekDrew

Diamond Member
Jun 7, 2000
9,099
19
81
It's not that it isn't possible, it's more that they don't want to implement it, support it, and pay patent fees. There are third party organizations that have voice-mail services which work similar to what you're talking about, and they work with almost all cellular networks.

See also: http://www.simulscribe.com/