Cannot access Nortel Voicemail System

I was getting ready to post the same issue when I read yours. I cannot access my office voice mail either from my 3g. I press the ** on the keypad but it just reverts back to the main greeting. I tried my wife's original iphone and no problem. I tried from another 3g and no luck there either. This is a big problem for with the new iphone. Anybody? Any ideas?

Exact same problem here! Initial iPhone had no trouble accessing the Nortel Office system, but now I cannot automatically sequence it with the 3G phone. Nor for that matter can I call the switchboard after hours and manually push the **voicemailboxpassword# sequence. It does not work.

Somewhat frustrating!

dgl2

Same here. Picked up my iPhone today and everything worked great until I tried to check my voice mail at the office. This is not good and needs to be fixed or I'll be taking this one back. Does anyone have any ideas?!

OK -- here is a fix -- but not a great one, but adequate. Go and turn off the 3G setting (settings, general, network, 3G), and then call your work number and type the sequence to your voicemail. That seems to work. I tried it twice with 3G off and it worked. Re-enabled 3G and it doesn't!

A temporary fix at best?

dgl

One last thing...

After dialing your office voicemail put a pause in before adding **, then another pause, then your voicemailbox number and passcode, pause, then the # sign. Thus:

,**voicemailboxnumberandpasscode,#

ALL with 3G disabled to make it work.

I have the same problem. I tried turning off 3G but that does not help. Apple customer support had no answer. My firm's telephone servicer suggested it was a network problem, but there are plenty of people in my office with ATT Wireless that use other devices that have no issue. I tried six other 3Gs in the store and none of them worked. The Apple Genius at my local store suggested that I do a restore to force the device to install the latest build which was more up to date than the build as installed on the device but that did not help either. His 2.5G worked fine. He is attempting to escalate the issue to the engineering department. I also have an email to Nortel technical support to see if they have heard of the issue. It is hard to understand how a state-of-the-art telephone device cannot generate a proper keypress tone.

Thanks - I've retried it several times (with 3G off) and it works most of the time (though not always), but it is slow as it works through the sequence, unlike my initial 2.5G iPhone. I cannot imagine that a workable fix is impossible. I'll be especially interested to hear if/what you hear back from Nortel (my system as well).

Thanks-
dgl

I've tried it with 3G off and still nothing. I have a Meridian Nortel Norstar system. They have got to do something about this!!!

I live in metro Boston and was in the city today and found that it worked better, as in more smoothly, there, but still with 3G off. Made me wonder if location has something to do with it as well? Anyway, still never works with 3G on. And it is a pain switching off and on 3G just to check voicemail, and that with no guarantee it will even pick up properly.

I have the same problem trying to access my Partner Voicemail at my home office. It did finally work after I shut off the 3G (thanks for the tip). However, it only worked 2 of the 4 times I tried it. This is a real issue that needs to be rectified right away!

Yes, I have the same issue and I'm about to return the phone. I tried what you suggested to turn off the 3G and I got the same message I always get. This is aggravating. I'm the only one at my company who has the 3G iPhone and the owner was going to get it so then we'd have the Mobile Me, but because of this issue he's not buying it, so there's no reason to have it. I can't get my e-mail and I can't check my voice messages. He said until the problem is fixed he's not buying the phone.

What on the keyboard is a "pause"?

Yeah, this is terrible. After a few days now I can only access my voicemail about 1 in 10 tries (only with 3G off). This is a disaster!

This is not an iphone or 3G problem. THIS IS A NORTEL PROBLEM because I've had this problem for two years on my Motorola RAZR. Only a moron would require two identical tones (not too fast, not too short, and not too far apart) to log into a voicemail system. Heck, those idiots (Nortel) do not even follow the traditional voicemail commands (i.e., "7" to delete, "9" to save, etc...).

Hopefully Apple or someone will come up with a solution because Nortel refuses to. Needless to say, I have not bought or recommended Nortel in years.

Complexlitigator is right. It's not apple's problem, it's Nortel's, which is a dinosaur of a company filled with boneheads anyways, by the way. The real issue is that the voicemail system is too picky about the way the "*" button is transmitted. It evidently only recognizes the tone and not the touch (as there are two methods for reading phone keys) and it evidently needs to be done in a particular manner, which is why it doesn't work with 3G on and why it only works sometimes with 3G off. Is suspect there is very little Apple could do even if it wanted to unless it wanted to reverse engineer the Nortel voicemail system to see what exactly the problem was. I would suggest trying to raise a big enough stink with the Nortel tech guys to the point where they might actually do an update, but don't hold your breath.