Reply #15: In response to your poll [View All]

[tarheel]

"Diversity is good"

I am in the Telecommunications industry and very familiar with voice mail systems.

Most voice mail systems have two interfaces to the telephone companies switching system. One interface is several analog lines.
These "trunks" carry the voice transmission for leaving messages, replaying messages, maintaining your mailbox, etc...

The second interface is an SMDI link (Simplified Message Desk Interface). This link is the data link between the switching equipment and the voice mail system.

This link carries the call setup information from the switch to the voice mail system and it also carries the messages from the voice mail system to the switch teling the switch to activate or de-activate the message waiting indicator. This is the stutter dial tone you hear telling you that you have a message.

The lost likely cause of your problem is that this SMDI link is down and therefore the switch never receives the message from the voice mail system telling it to de-activate the message waiting indicator for you phone when you retrieve your messages.

The Telephone company is most likely aware of the problem but may be waiting for some piece of hardware to replace the faulty one to resolve it.