AT&T says it's working on a patch to fix voicemail issues

The carrier says a "vendor sever problem" is to blame...

What you need to know

• AT&T has confirmed reports of an ongoing voicemail outage affecting customers, says it will be fixed with a patch.
• It blamed a "vendor server problem" for the ongoing outage.
• The company has not provided a timetable for when the problem will be resolved.

AT&T has confirmed that its ongoing voicemail outage will be fixed by an upcoming patch, however it has not divulged when exactly the fix is to be rolled out.

According to a report by The Verge an AT&T statement to the outlet claimed:

"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."

AT&T users across all platforms have been experiencing voicemail issues for several weeks. Much of the information surrounding the outage is fairly nebulus at this stage, as it seems unclear what exactly is causing the problem. As The Verge notes:

That statement seems to suggest that only a single phonemaker is affected, and that phonemaker might share the blame for the outage — but that wouldn't make sense, because AT&T customers are reporting a wide array of different phones are having the same issue.

Right now, there's a 40+ page thread on AT&T's support forums concerning the recent voicemail issues. (It was marked as "solved" on page 8 by AT&T.) In the thread, AT&T reps have attributed the issues to something much different than a recent software update — they've said it's because of a "vendor server problem," as first stated on October 9th, and reiterated as recently as today, October 23rd.

A 40+ page thread on AT&T's forums suggests that the problem is geographically widespread, affecting users in Arizona, California, Florida, Indiana and North Carolina to name a few locations. The reports also suggest that users of many different devices are experiencing difficulties. The Verge again notes that whilst most reports seems to be coming from Samsung users, there are also reports from iPhone, Pixel and Motorola owners also. (The thread started in an AT&T Android forum, which may explain higher reports amongst Samsung users.)

Given that the problem affects a wide range of devices, it seems pretty likely the problem is at AT&T's end of the line, and the report notes that the reference to the "device manufacturer" in the initial statement may denote that AT&T's servers is the hardware in question.

Whilst no timetable has been offered for the purported fix, there is a potential solution. Customers can of course wait for the outage to be patched, or they can choose to have their mailbox rebuilt. Whilst this may fix the issue going forward, it is reported that this will delete any saved messages or ones received during the outage. So if you need those messages, this is not the solution for you.