Widespread AT&T Voicemail Outage Affecting iPhone Users in the US

Swathes of AT&T customers in the U.S. are said to be experiencing problems accessing voicemail, based on reports on social media and the network's support forums.

The issues have apparently been going on for several weeks, but while AT&T says it's aware of the problem, the company hasn't yet provided a detailed explanation or given an indication of when it might be fixed.

Late on Wednesday, The Verge highlighted a 40-page thread in AT&T's support forums that's full of users relating their experiences trying to access voicemail, to no avail. Android users are being met with error messages, while iPhone users are unable to view the Visual Voicemail feature to manage their recordings. People have also reported problems on Google Pixel phones and Motorola phones.

The first reports date back to October 1, and customers are said to be affected in several states, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Nevada, and North Carolina. AT&T representatives responding to the complaints have claimed that the issues are due to a "vendor server problem," but it's still unclear which manufacturer is being referred to, while a statement given to The Verge similarly lacks detail:

"A recent software update to some devices may be affecting our customers' voicemail. We are working with the device manufacturer to issue a patch to resolve this and apologize for any inconvenience this has caused."

The current AT&T advice for affected customers who need immediate access to voicemail is to create a new mailbox by calling customer service. However, customers who go down this route are being warned that they will lose all saved and unheard messages. The only alternative, it seems, is to simply wait it out and hope AT&T resolves the issue sooner rather than later. We'll update this article if we learn of any developments.