Wireless carrier voicemail

I don't use Visual Voicemail on my iPhone. Haven't used it since I got it, don't need it, never plan on using it. In fact, I pay PhoneTag so that I don't have to use it -- when you call my cell phone, if I do not pick up, it actually forwards to the PhoneTag system to transcribe your voicemail for me (technically I use a combination of Google Voice and PhoneTage depending on the number you call, but explaining that would be confusing), so I truly use no capacity in the AT&T voicemail system.

What's interesting to me is that the iPhone data plan includes Visual Voicemail, which presume means that there is some sort of related value -- $3, $4, $5 per month? Actually, AT&T (whenever they launch it) is rumored to be charging $2.99 per month for Visual Voicemail on the BlackBerry, so let's call it $3 per month or $36 per year; that's a pretty good amount for me to put against my PhoneTag service -- it would contribute about 1/3 the cost.

Of course, AT&T won't give me a $3 per month discount even though I've never even initialized the Visual Voicemail service; the cost is just part of the data plan package for the iPhone whether I use it or not.

Perhaps they should make the Visual Voicemal an a la carte option with the next generation iPhone.

PS -- if you're looking for a more productive voicemail solution, I highly recommend trying PhoneTag out (this link will give you a 30-day free trial)