A few months ago I noticed that my iPhone Visual Voicemail was not working reliably. Most of the time messages kicked into the standard NTT docomo dial-in messaging service (1417). I didn’t pay it much mind until December when I had a lot of job related back and forth with missed calls showing in the docomo SNS feed but nothing ever showing in Visual Voicemail.

Today I finally called docomo support and got a quick answer:

“Are you using the latest iOS update?”

Of course I am.

“NTT docomo recognizes the problem and is working on the Visual Voicemail issue. When Apple releases the new update please install it and let us know if it doesn’t solve the issue.”

Okay, that sounds like a plan. Hopefully iOS 15.3 will fix the NTT Docomo Visual Voicemail issue. Until then NTT Docomo iPhone users will have to use the dedicated 1417 dial-in message if Visual Voicemail is not working. Judging from the quick support response it sounds like a widespread issue.

Update: good news, iOS 15.3 updates fixes the Visual Voicemail problem for docomo iPhone users.