Visual Voicemail Delay??

[martinmartin]

My iPhone has rather poor service in my house - works maybe half the time (all carriers are bad in my location).

I got 3 calls this morning but didn't answer them: 8AM, 10:21AM,10:27AM. The first 1 came while I was home, the next to came while I was at work (I have full service at work).

I assumed that none of these 3 people left voicemails because I didn't get any notification on the phone.

But then at 12:45PM I got a notification that I had 4 new voicemails - 3 for the missed calls and 1 for a call that never got to me.

Anyone have any experience with this?

 

[matticus008]

Don't worry; it happens from time to time. It has nothing to do with visual voicemail or AT&T. Sometimes notifications are not instant. SMS messages have the same issue.

Different servers in different time zones and different network conditions sometimes introduce a lag in arrival and notification (which are separate processes--it's not as though voicemail is sent to your phone--it's forwarded to a computer somewhere, and the computer notifies the phone). This is why arrival times are not guaranteed.

 

[martinmartin]

Don't worry; it happens from time to time. It has nothing to do with visual voicemail or AT&T. Sometimes notifications are not instant. SMS messages have the same issue.

Different servers in different time zones and different network conditions sometimes introduce a lag in arrival and notification (which are separate processes--it's not as though voicemail is sent to your phone--it's forwarded to a computer somewhere, and the computer notifies the phone). This is why arrival times are not guaranteed.

hmm thanks for the response. I just find it strange that my old blackberry never had this issue. I had that for a year or so in the same location and I dont ever remember this happening. Only had the iPhone for a week...

 

[matticus008]

hmm thanks for the response. I just find it strange that my old blackberry never had this issue. I had that for a year or so in the same location and I dont ever remember this happening. Only had the iPhone for a week...

It has nothing to do with any phone hardware whatsoever--whether you have a cheap Nokia, a Windows smartphone, or an iPhone, it's the network that provides the information to the handset. It is much more likely that you never noticed this happening with your Blackberry, because most of the time, you don't just barely miss calls and so a delay in notification doesn't affect you. By the time you check, you see the missed call and the voicemail notification. It's an intermittent and relatively rare problem--it might only happen to you once a year. Some people have never experienced it.

With the volume of calls handled every day, it's remarkable that there aren't many more problems with delivery.

As someone who tragically spends huge amounts of my day on the phone and missing calls because of being on the other line, I've missed a few notifications on all four handsets I've used in the past several years.

 

[Ted Witcher]

How does the voicemail on the iPhone work, anyway? Is it sent to the phone? If not, shouldn't it be?

 

[martinmartin]

It has nothing to do with any phone hardware whatsoever--whether you have a cheap Nokia, a Windows smartphone, or an iPhone, it's the network that provides the information to the handset. It is much more likely that you never noticed this happening with your Blackberry, because most of the time, you don't just barely miss calls and so a delay in notification doesn't affect you. By the time you check, you see the missed call and the voicemail notification. It's an intermittent and relatively rare problem--it might only happen to you once a year. Some people have never experienced it.

With the volume of calls handled every day, it's remarkable that there aren't many more problems with delivery.

As someone who tragically spends huge amounts of my day on the phone and missing calls because of being on the other line, I've missed a few notifications on all four handsets I've used in the past several years.

well ill keep an eye out over the next few weeks to see what happens.

i can tell you this, though, this didnt happen with the bb. i would oftentimes get calls and not answer (for various reasons) - if the person left a message, i was notified immediately. if not, it never showed up several hours later.

only time will tell...

cheers.

 

[question fear]

Keep in mind if you are on the phone and another call comes in you won't get a notification. Visual Voicemail relies on EDGE so if you are on the phone it delays the notification until after you are off. If you're getting intermittent signal around your home, it could be affecting your internet signal and delaying the voicemails.

 

[ehulslander]

phone or service

I'm having this problem too.

I understand the reasoning behind both sides of the equation.
I'm not sure where my loyalties lie with the issue

It's not a matter of noticing or not noticing if it occurred before because the simple truth of the matter is that it didn't. In all the time that I had an iPhone, I never had delivery difficulties.

Truth be told, it didn't start happening until I upgraded from iPhone OS 2 to 2.2.

And I too have experienced the voicemail from no missed call, and sometimes a delay of 12 hours on delivery of a voicemail from a missed call. I've also received SMS up to 4 hours delayed.

The question becomes is it a delivery problem, or a reception problem.


The other really big thing that I've noticed, is a marked drop in reception after the upgrade to OS 3.0. I don't know if this has happened to anyone else, but most notably, while on calls, as soon as the reception suffers a little bit, I get "call failure" messages. Has anyone else been noticing this?

Because of when and how this has occurred, one would point directly at a software issue with the device. The way to check, I suppose, would be to reset my handset entirely, and wait for it to happen again. When looking for answers to this problem, that was at one point offered as a solution. It even recommended resetting the phone and then doing an upgrade to the OS 3 software. That somehow, upgrade after upgrade may have caused a problem with the OS. As a PC and MAC user, I have experienced this very thing on PC, and less so on MAC. But it has occurred.

I'm not ready to believe the intermittent signal theory. I can send and receive SMS while on the phone. So I think the notification of a voicemail comes in, but the delivery... because that does happen on the EDGE network, and it does stream... (and I have had it stop in mid message) does not occur until you are off the phone. And as soon as I left my house, used the internet, google maps, SMS, email, etc somewhere else, you would think it would then send notification. But this is sadly not the case.

Thoughts, anyone?

*I did just notice the age of this thread... and I guess perhaps this issue is beyond the software and service is probably some combination of the two*