What is Visual Voicemail? 
Oh right…As a Android user it’s not of any use to me. Looks cool enough though.
It’s cool and all but personally I always disable voicemail and haven’t missed it one bit. If it’s important there’s this magical thing called “texting” or even “email” people can use instead.
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You can use hullomail though which does the same thing. It just means that you setup a new voicemail account with them and then your rejected/missed calls etc get redirected there instead. You then get a notification through their app where you can view all your voicemails the same way as Visual Voicemail
BTW Android does support visual voicemail but none of the UK networks have implemented it.
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BTW Android does support visual voicemail but none of the UK networks have implemented it.
I guess that’s my new project for next weekend! Which Android version supports it? I’ve got a test device with Android 7.1.
Is it really worth doing though?
If you use voicemail a lot, visual voicemail is fantastic.
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YAWL – yet another waiting list 
This sounds great, I’m looking forward to it!
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Every now and then, someone leaves me a voicemail (e.g. grandmother) and I have to wait 5 minutes listening through the previous 6 that I didn’t delete last time…
Thank you!
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You’ve reminded me to call 3 and turn Voicemail off 
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I’m assuming, since it’s EE, you’re working with Transatel? Telecoms is a difficult market, but I do think there is a space for new entrants.
I know some people have mentioned features like a single number for multiple devices, etc. which I think is underserved in the UK. The solution is actually rather simple (even accounting for each device needing its own number) - the key being the SIM assigned number not needing to be the provided inbound number or presented outbound.
It will be interesting to see how this develops and I’d be interested if you are looking for anyone to become involved in this.
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the key being the SIM assigned number not needing to be the provided inbound number or presented outbound.
It’s surprising that such a simple thing is apparently impossible to grok by anyone in the telecoms industry, especially in this day and age. Even “solutions” offered by the telcos often involve some hacks like a separate app instead of just doing everything at the network level (and then they quote lack of adoption as the reason for not doing it - well it’s no surprise you’re not gonna get adoption for half-baked “solutions”).
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I could do multi-device, single number right now with any network but there’d be call costs for redirection. If you’re receiving SIP trunk though, you can redirect where-ever you want within your own network. Costs are SIP infrastructure based, not per call, so it works out with scale. And this isn’t even the best or most cost effective way to do it.
It’s remarkable how backward the telecoms industry is; having worked in the various areas over the years, there’s obvious gaps that could be filled in a heart beat.
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I can do multi-device single numbers (or multiple numbers single device) on my own MVNO right now (in fact that’s how I’m keeping a French number for friends/family to stay in touch) as I control the call routing part (SIMs are abstracted to SIP endpoints); all the redirection happens internally at the SIP level so no costs there. It’s not even that difficult to set up (I mean if an idiot with no formal experience in telcos can set this up, then surely the telcos themselves should be able to, right?).
It’s remarkable how backward the telecoms industry is; having worked in the various areas over the years, there’s obvious gaps that could be filled in a heart beat.
Totally agreed. 
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Completely agree. 
It’s a mess, but I’m not sure I’d hit the market without some VC or crowdfunding personally. I’ve done the ‘business’ thing and you have to give everything for a good few years to get it going to just hit the market. I’d want to be seeing some shift and major returns for the effort, personally.
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Yep I know. As far as I’m concerned I did this more for the technical challenge and because I was fed up with conventional carriers (they’re all bad in one way or another), so although it doesn’t make sense from a financial point of view (I’m paying a good 200£/month for what is essentially maybe 3GB of traffic on average) I appreciate being in control of the experience and actually having power to fix things if they do break, and not getting marketing spam from my carrier (it’s sad that despite paying good money to them they still feel the need to bombard you with garbage. If they made a no-spam “bolt-on” I’d honestly pay good money for it).
but I’m not sure I’d hit the market without some VC or crowdfunding personally
Any new player that merely goes through an enabler (like Zevvle, or Giffgaff, etc) will always be a second-class citizen no matter what; I feel like the only solution is major disruption by someone with enough money to blast through the frequency licensing costs and infrastructure costs (aka cover the entire country with towers), as to not be bound by any limitations or non-compete clauses with their host carrier. The major tech companies should really give this a shot.
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Respect the work you’ve put in; I’ve been down the rabbit hole of tech because I like it my way, but on the broadband market. It’s now merged into one of the ‘bad boys’, but it was a hell of a learning experience. 
I’d love a mobile network from one of the tech giants, but I do think there’s space for a ‘real’ virtual entrant. Access to the raw network is possible with the right contacts, it’s probably not EE, but that’s not the worst thing. I’ve explored the the BTw MVNO offering a bit, and it’s not terrible based on the EE network. If I ever end up out of contracts or work… who knows.
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Access to the raw network is possible with the right contacts
This is never the problem. It’s more about the strings attached to that kind of access, or simply how much you have to pay for it (which means you can do whatever you want but at such an expensive price that you can’t provide a competitive offering, so you have to compensate by screwing customers here and there, which gets us right back to the beginning, as you’re not really fixing the industry).
There’s also the issue that mobile networks as we know them are very inefficient as far as tech is concerned; everything is routed through the “core network” which is extremely wasteful (and doesn’t scale well if you want to use wireless to compete with fixed broadband). Ideally there should be a new standard where the PDP contexts from the phones are terminated right at the eNodeB level (with per-device diversions for stuff like legal intercept or debugging) and so it works more like Wi-Fi hotspots. This also improves reliability as there will no longer be single points of failure.
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There’s options, not easy ones, but it’s possible to buy raw access under the radar of non-competes scope. It’s difficult to discuss, but for example the spectrum reselling market that most don’t know about. If you have the money (back to VC/crowdfunding) you can lock down your MHz without any ties - granted not many, but by the time you hit the costs we’re talking about you could take over the parent network…
Edit: based on your edit; without exposing too much, there’s work in this area into moving things more to regional termination. Much needs to be done to actually terminate at the regional node and not use it as a PoP on network and route through London anyway, but things are moving.
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it’s possible to buy raw access under the radar of non-competes scope
But then again, the whole point is to compete; so this wouldn’t really make any sense. Not to mention, I’m not sure there is a market segment that is large enough to sustain leasing raw spectrum while at the same time not being something the host carrier is interested in dealing with themselves.
without exposing too much
This is also one of the problems with this industry; the fact that everything is kept secret under NDA’s and stuff, even though it would make everyone’s life better if it was all open (especially on the security side of things, as security by obscurity never works). The internet industry always strives for openness and it didn’t hurt their success, so I don’t see why telcos can’t do the same.
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It’s a complex industry, but not impossible. There are some networks that really don’t want the consumer BS, and they’re willing to talk. Telefonica UK doesn’t even really want to exist if you listen to some circles, at least Telefonica doesn’t want it. If you can raise the right capital and make the right moves… there’s space.
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