Telstra hasn’t yet officially confirmed it online, but some Twitter users have reported that visual voicemail is now available as an option for their Telstra iPhone accounts — for an additional $5 a month.It’s our understanding that the feature will be officially announced this week, and we’ll update this post with confirmed details and a link once we know more. Update: Telstra has confirmed the service, to be known as MessageBank Plus. Note that it’s only available to postpaid users.
Visual voicemail was one of the main selling points for the original iPhone in the US, but to date in Australia Vodafone has been the only carrier to offer it, and that rollout experienced quite a few problems.
Judd Howie
Monday, March 21, 2011 at 4:54 PMWhen oh when will Optard get visual voice mail?
Jay
Monday, March 21, 2011 at 5:02 PM$5 extra month, just to be able to see who called you? Who would actually want to pay for this?
Glenn
Monday, March 21, 2011 at 6:04 PM“just to be able to see who called you?”
You obviously don’t understand the Visual Voicemail product, it’s far more than that.
(Really, all smartphones are capable of this type of thing, ant there should be much more of it.)
Peter Ortner
Tuesday, March 22, 2011 at 7:04 AMI guess this would appeal to those who don’t want to pay 89¢/min calling MessageBank to listen to crap messages that were meant for someone else or hangups.
Dan Warne
Monday, March 21, 2011 at 5:07 PMSeems like a logical decision by Telstra. I bet the system costs money to licence on a per-user basis, and you have to get quite a bit of voicemail for visual voicemail to be a particularly useful enhancement over the standard one, really…
Now, as for Telstra still charging a monthly fee for calling line identifier on landlines, 15 years on, when every other telco offers it for free, what is THAT about?!
Ryan
Monday, March 21, 2011 at 5:34 PMMy understanding (and I could be wrong because last I read about it was when Vodafone got it) was that visual voicemail was essentially a special email account that had the voice message as an attachment. An enterprising user setup a visual voicemail ‘portal’ for 3 sometime back.
Dan Warne
Monday, March 21, 2011 at 5:58 PMReally! Very interesting. I didn’t know that.
Liam
Monday, March 21, 2011 at 5:12 PMWhy does Vodafone have this option but not 3… Do they not want to go through all the hassle?
Stephen
Monday, March 21, 2011 at 5:29 PMi am an android user i would LOVE to get visual voicemail, but if its $5 a pop for iphone users i would expect it will be equally as over priced for everone else. I would only be prepaired to pay a nominal fee ($2 or less). I can’t understand why this is that expensive really.
damo
Monday, March 21, 2011 at 6:14 PMI want this so that I don’t have to listen to some infuriating digitised voice saying ” message……… received……… today ……….at…… 3……..p…m” as slowly as humanly possible between each phone call in order to rack up as many time based charges to your account as possible
TrendyTim
Monday, March 21, 2011 at 6:46 PMI’d love it but i get almost no voice mail, partly because i always answer the phone when it rings. So bollocks to $5 a month.
Great news for people that use a lot of voice mail though.
Bleh
Monday, March 21, 2011 at 6:48 PMJeez, I just assumed that all providers had this and for free. I mean when Voda first got it, I figured everyone else would follow…
Bernhard de Kok
Monday, March 21, 2011 at 7:32 PM$5.00 a month is really, REALLY way too much. Especially when I’m already on an expensive enough plan.
But then again, I suppose AT&T people get this for nothing and pay for tethering, whilst Telstra gives us tethering for nothing and charges us for Visual Voicemai.
Still seems pricey though :(
Shaun
Wednesday, March 23, 2011 at 10:39 AMAT&T include unlimited data to the phone. To my knowledge Telstra doesn’t (I know I buy a separate data pack to get 5GB). Thus why they charge extra for tethering.
When I used AT&T in the States, I thought visual voice mail was pretty nifty, but I currently don’t get enough voice mail to warrant $5 a month for it.
Derek Adams-White
Monday, March 21, 2011 at 7:45 PMIt’s your turn now Optus.
Shaun Wilson
Monday, March 21, 2011 at 8:15 PM$5 a month is ridiculous. Ongoing costs are probably *less* if people are using Visual Voicemail.
Technically, VV is just accessing your voicemail via IMAP, like it’s an email mailbox. The cost would have been in adding an IMAP gateway to their existing voicemail database. Once that work is done, people are now checking their voicemail by using a small amount of data instead of an extended voice call listening to a slow woman tell you what numbers to press.
But at a glance it looks like some kind of revolutionary new feature, so Telstra think they can get away with charging for it. Let’s not let them.
Lifehacker, can you press them for an explanation why they’re charging $5 a month for a service that doesn’t add any ongoing costs?
Davey David von Davidson
Tuesday, March 22, 2011 at 12:28 AM“Lifehacker, can you press them for an explanation..?”
I concur. $5 is way too much for what is essentially just receiving data.
Callie Rasmussen
Monday, March 21, 2011 at 10:25 PMI don’t care if it comes to my phone or I hit the button to retrieve because unlimited voicemail on virgin has always been free – that’s something they got right from the get go :)
Ben Farley
Monday, March 21, 2011 at 11:17 PMI have this currently setup so when i have a voice message it comes up as an email on my iphone that i can then listen to…i’m with Three. Settings are…
POP account
incoming: mail.three.com.au
username: Your.Email@three.com.au
password: 4 digit pin
SSL: off
Authentication: Password
Server Port:110
Jayphen Simpson
Tuesday, March 22, 2011 at 12:10 AM$5/month? What a joke.
I assume this will not be available to pre-paid customers…?
Mark
Wednesday, March 23, 2011 at 11:19 AMIt works great on Vodafone…. I cant believe Telstra will charge $5 extra! What a ripoff
Steve
Wednesday, March 23, 2011 at 3:03 PMvoicemail? no thanks.
If it’s important they’ll call back.
If I know them, I’ll call them back.
trevorlf
Friday, April 29, 2011 at 8:22 AMTypical Telstra what a rip charging 5 bucks
james
Tuesday, June 7, 2011 at 4:05 PMI get a lot of voicemail at work, and I need to prioritise it. So this is great for me – $5 will easily cover the cash I save from dialing 101 all the time anyway.
My problem is that every time I call Telstra to try to get it turned on, they act as if they’ve never heard of the service. Same with the store. It literally doesn’t seem to exist despite the press release.