Disable Voicemail

[VivienL1]

How do I disable voicemail? After 3 rings my calls go to voicemail, that's way too fast. I prefer my phone to continuously ring. I don't want voicemail anymore, but I can't find a way to disable it. 

[Burdwood]

Well, I'm just a fellow customer who is trying to help here. You clearly state that you "don't want voicemail anymore", so your title / first post might be somewhat misleading / inconclusive? You also have still not mentioned what phone you use. Some answers can differ depending on the device / OS.

Here's a post about extending ring time: https://productioncommunity.publicmobile.ca/t5/Get-Support/Access-Voicemail-Remotely-and-Change-Numb...  @Nezgar  has always been very generous with their technical expertise. However, the post is from early 2020. The introduction of VoLTE broke some call forwarding functions which might or might not have been fixed since. Since I'm happy with the stock settings, and therefore have not played with these options, I can't say if extending the amount of rings was one of them. I'll let you try for yourself.

[VivienL1]

My main concern is not disabling voicemail, its actually what results from having voicemail turned on that I don't like. When voicemail is on, my calls ring 3 times and stops. Turning on an extended absence greeting still sends my call to voicemail after 3 rings which I don't want. I want my phone to continue ringing for a long period of time and I've noticed it would do that when voicemail was not activated. If there is a way to extend the number of rings on my phone to say 10 rings before it goes to voicemail, I would accept that as a solution. 

[Burdwood]

You can't completely disable voicemail, but in your voicemail menu you can activate an extended absence greeting (mine is along the lines of "I'm not accepting voicemails at this point, please contact me by email or text.") Then you can choose to disable the caller's option to leave a message. If the function is activated, the caller hears your extended absence greeting and then the call is disconnected.

Edited to add: there are also posts from community members, who are way more tech savvy than I am, that have the dial sequence to extend the number of rings on your phone. There are likely differences between Android and iOS for that, though.