For cost and “go along to get along” reasons, I will be in an AT&T plan. AT&T offers a voice mail feature, but for security reasons, I’d rather not have my calls on AT&T servers. Therefore: Does anyone know if there will be a way to set up the phone to answer on say the 3rd ring, and play a brief message that suggests the caller call back at a later time, send an email, or begin recording at the beep, which will record their voice to a file on the phone?
Ideally, I would like the phone, if it detects the caller has a Signal account (by referring to a list kept on the phone or from some on-line directory) would terminate the call and call back using Signal. Sorry about posting two items today. I ordered my phone yesterday and these questions had been held until then.
I agree with that desire. Consider though that if your phone is off the network (out of range of a tower, switched off, you used the kill switch, the battery is flat, …) then voice mail could still happen inside the network provider - unless the provider offers a configuration option to disable it.
As to your actual question, you may have to wait and see. I don’t have my phone. Probably nobody has a phone yet! It’s a good question to work on once the phones are out the door …
I like the idea of a software answering machine, both for security and the convenience of having the original voicemail files on your device. I’ve needed to download my voicemail files for my Verizon phone recently, but you have to subscribe to Visual Voicemail to get it, and even though I’ve got a Verizon-certified unlocked phone, I’m not eligible for it.
I don’t know about local answering on the phone, I do know every carrier I’ve had allows you to send to another number for voicemail (this is how Google voice and similar solutions work) so even if you aren’t able to do this on the phone itself you could get a sip service you trust and use that for VM (or even a land line with an analog answering machine if you wanted to go really basic).
The forwarding to another service/number works even when the mobile is offline as it is a configuration on the carriers system.
I know this isn’t exactly what you asked for but it may be a useful work around for you or someone else with a similar question.
You then need some way of accessing the voice mail remotely.
That is certainly possible but if the original concern was privacy / security then accessing voice mail remotely introduces its own privacy / security issues (and not just whether you trust the voice mail service).
However because of the scenarios that I mention above, you need both 1. automatic answer on the phone and take a message and 2. divert within the network on “no answer” and take a message somewhere.