I have now gone three weeks without the visual voicemail “feature” on my iPhone working. AT&T cannot tell me why, and the Apple team is as usual clueless.
Being without visual voicemail alerted me to a couple of things to add to the growing complaints about the iPhone’s lack of security, such as the fact that an iPhone comes set up without a voicemail password. I never had to think about this issue until I found that my visual voicemail had stopped working. Like my other AT&T phone, a venerable Blackberry, I began to dial “1” to get my voicemail. However, with the iPhone, there was no password set up as a default. Thankfully, I have one set up now, but for all of you other iPhone owners out there, your voicemail box is just a single caller-ID spoof away from the rest of the world, no 10,000 attempts necessary.
I like my iPhone so much, and could not imagine switching full-time to another device after two years of seeing how good things can get, but it seems like at least in the US, the combination of Apple and AT&T cannot quite get things done. I do not imagine for a second that the incompetents at any of the other three national carriers could do half as well, but it is disappointing to see at least one supposedly current feature (3G, visual voicemail, tethering, etc) always on the wrong side of the horizon.
If Visual voicemail is down much longer, I am going to change my iPhone plan to a Blackberry one and at least have the access to the great e-mail options when I switch my SIM out.