> VVM works by fetching voicemail messages from an IMAP server maintained by the device’s carrier. The server URL and credentials for this server are provided to the device by the carrier over SMS.
Visual voicemail is just IMAP and SMS? Wow, for some reason I assumed there would be some distinct protocol for that. It's pretty interesting that it's implemented using the existing software the phone already runs on.
And frustrating to learn that an open protocol with free implementations is locked behind a carrier that often requires significant fees for this feature.
I remember reading Visual VoiceMail was a patent feature ( Not by Apple ) and require some software and patents fees before being offered to customer, and hence the cost.
Otherwise I love VMM, and it really should be a standard on all iPhone and Carriers.
I dunno, but here's a way to visual voicemail your own mail (this is how I have been doing it since 2015):
1. sign up with a voip provider that either terminates on your own pbx (e.g. asterisk/freepbx) or provides voicemail with emailed audio files. setup said service with voicemail.
2. setup your favorite container system and let systemd manage the service
3. create a container that watches for new audio voicemails , when it finds a new voicemail push it to your favorite cloud provider (s3, gcp bucket, azure etc) then trigger that providers speech-to-text function on the audio file in the related cloud storage. store the resulting text message and metadata in a db.
4. create another container that simply watches that db for new messages and push out alerts however you see fit. you have many paths here. i went with a web-based ui that pulled the data ala google voice.
3 years ago mozilla dropped deepspeech which changed everything - https://github.com/mozilla/DeepSpeech
i have since replaced step 3 with my own deepspeech server. none of my data goes to any of the major privacy violators with this setup.
I know I’m the late 2000s, if you had a smartphone there was a line item charge $10-15 for smartphones. If you had a blackberry you got BES, if you had Apple you got VVM.
The excuse the carriers used for charging for it was always bullshit. But like hotel WiFi, if you had one of these smartphones you didn’t care because work was paying for it.
Visual voicemail is just IMAP and SMS? Wow, for some reason I assumed there would be some distinct protocol for that. It's pretty interesting that it's implemented using the existing software the phone already runs on.