In 2007, when Apple launched its first iPhone, it also introduced Visual Voicemail. This feature presents a visual interface on the smartphone that allows users to randomly access voicemail. In order for this feature to work, carriers are required to install an Apple compliant voicemail server. This potentially allowed carriers to differentiate their service offering.

In the UK, only O2 and EE offer Visual Voicemail. Vodafone and Three have so far taken a business decision that this is not something that their customers would want. I cannot disagree more.

Barring financial reasons, I cannot imagine why any carrier would choose not to implement Visual Voicemail or a similar technology. It is truly a pain having to listen to old voicemails repeatedly just to replay the current voice message.