I'm a huge fan of visual voicemail myself, but for an MVNO where most of their basic technical systems (like porting, activation, and self-serve) are still being developed and made workable, I don't know how much sense this makes.
I fear visual voicemail would end up becoming another system that wouldn't work too well (or not at all), and it probably would not be a significant source of revenue for them, either.
Also, AFAIK, none of the other similarly priced MVNOs offer visual voicemail (Virgin, Koodo, PC Mobile, Phonebox, Fido, Mobilicity (not an MVNO, I know, but still), and so many others).
Maybe in another couple years, once PM has all its basic systems figured out completely, this would be good for them to roll out.
I do believe any bugs/errors being experienced at the moment will be sorted out and PM will be fully functional. And no harm in putting the feature request for Visual Voicemail out there.
I tried YouMail.com, the calls don't get forwarded properly and you can't check your voicemail. I made sure to double and triple check the settings you are supposed to put and the number to forward.
YouMail doesn't work with all carriers, in this case, it doesn't work with PM.
YouMail requires a carrier to support "Conditional call forwarding” (CCF) and "Original Called Number" (OCN) - so YouMail can identify which mailbox to route the call to.
If you found that it doesn't work then I guess PM doesn't support one or both of these.
You could try Fongo - Fongo gives you your own Canadian ph# which makes the configuration simpler (vs. YouMail). I tried Fongo for VoIP about a year ago and found that the quality & reliability were not good enough, but maybe it is good for use for just VM?
I tried to set up YouMail today as well, and got the same thing. I can confirm that the problem is that OCN isn't being passed through by PM... if you call your number from another phone and let it go to voicemail after setting up the forwarding, the recorded message specifically says that the OCN is missing. If you manually enter you phone number at that point, the call does then connect to YouMail. I'm surprised that OCN doesn't work, since PM is using Telus's infrastructure on the back end. Maybe we're using Telus's carrier network but PM's own mailbox system?
Visual Voicemail is an Apple feature, the messages are stored On the iPhone, just the fact that carriers have a say in which iPhone feature we may or may not use is something awfully disgusting.
