Tuesday, November 3, 2009

iPhone - Voicemail Issue / Tethering

Image representing iPhone as depicted in Crunc...Image via CrunchBase

Quite the discovery today on my iPhone. Actually, it started yesterday. For days I had been noticing missed calls appear on my phone (I would actually see/hear the phone ring, just couldn't get to it), but no voicemails were appearing. I was simply under the assumption these people were calling me and not leaving a message. Was I wrong.

Yesterday afternoon I had a red balloon button Friday appear in the upper right hand corner of the Green Phone icon. This red balloon button is normally where you see missed calls, voicemails, etc. and is accompanied by a number. (As you can see in the image on the right.) However, this red balloon button had no number - it was blank. I clicked on it and was prompted to call my voicemail, because VVM (Visual Voicemail) was not available. When I called a nice electronic lady on the other end informed me I had 24 new voicemail messages - WOW! 24?!?! Apparently the missed calls I had been receiving over the past few days did have voicemails associated with them, I just wasn't being informed by my lovely phone. So after filtering through these messages, I set out on a mission to solve the issue.

I Googled my issue and started sorting through the various forums to narrow down my issue. I finally came across something sounded familiar...tethering. I had made the mistake of testing out tethering on my iPhone before Apple/AT&T actually released the proper code to do this (note: don't install software / updates that aren't approved by the provider - I should have known better...), but I was really anxious to see if I could get it to work. Apparently this crack of an install places a profile on your device known as "BenM.at" and subsequently disable VVM from working properly. Once I removed that profile from my iPhone - what do you know - voicemails started rolling in.

What is the moral of this little story? Don't install cracks/hacks/illegal versions of software/apps on ANY of your devices. No matter how anxious we are to get the latest version or sneak peek - sometimes it just isn't worth the trouble.

JDS | CIO



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3 comments:

Roger B. Choate said...

John David,

I have the tethering enabled with no voicemail problems. Are you using the 3G or 3GS? Has it happened all along or just out of the blue?

Roger Choate

JDS said...

I have the 3G. You might test your voicemail to make sure you are receiving messages when people call. I didn't think I had any problems either, I just thought people were not leaving me messages. I think VVM was working fine because I had tethering enabled more than 2 weeks, something triggered VVM to stop working approximately 2 weeks ago and deleting the profile associated with tethering fixed the problem.

Roger B. Choate said...

I am using the 3GS and seem to have no issue..."seem" being the key word. Not sure if there might be a difference between the 3G and 3GS. I checked my voicemail by dialing it and it was current.