It's been reported that Vodafone UK won't be supporting the Visual Voicemail feature on the Apple iPhone when the device goes on sale next week. Visual Voicemail lets users check their voice messages via an on-screen 'inbox' rather than listening to voice prompts. The company has told customers that it has made a 'business decision' and has no plans to support visual voicemail in the near future. However, it also admitted there's been a lot of interest in the service.
A similar situation appears to have occurred in Australia, where Vodafone's iPhone customers didn't get Visual Voicemail until last year.
However, Vodafone UK isn't the only network not to offer the functionality – neither Tesco Mobile nor Orange UK have enabled it. In fact, O2 is the only UK network to currently provide Visual Voicemail (although Orange plans to introduce it). Vodafone's decision seems particularly strange when its Vodafone.net service already offers similar functionality, converting voicemail messages to email attachments for existing customers (although it's currently unavailable to new customers, with the company promising "a great new mobile email service" soon).
[Sources: abouthere.co.uk; allaboutiphone.net; twitter.com/rsmck]