Setup and manage voicemail on your mobile

Learn how to use Telstra MessageBank, Message2Txt, or Apple Live Voicemail to receive voicemail messages on your mobile.

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    Select your voicemail service

    If you’re looking for help with an answering service on a home or business phone, learn about MessageBank for home and business.

    MessageBank

    MessageBank is Telstra's voicemail service. It provides an answering service if a phone line is busy or can’t be answered. Callers are greeted with your greeting and then asked to leave a message.

    Upfront Plans have MessageBank activated by default.

    Important

    Apple iPhones have used Apple Live Voicemail by default since updating to iOS 18. Check the Live Voicemail tab to learn how it’s different from MessageBank.

    Turn MessageBank on or off

    For Upfront Plans in My Telstra:

    1. Go to Services
    2. Select your service
    3. Go to Menu (or three vertical dots in the top right-hand side)
    4. Select Manage your MessageBank to turn it on.

    For other plans:

    1. Call 101
    2. Follow the voice prompts to set up your personal greeting
    3. Set up your MessageBank PIN.

    For Upfront Plans in My Telstra:

    1. Go to Services
    2. Select your service
    3. Go to Menu (or three vertical dots in the top right-hand side)
    4. Select Manage your MessageBank to make changes
    5. Turn off MessageBank and Update settings.

    For other plans:

    Fill out this MessageBank online form to request to turn off your MessageBank service.

    MessageBank Plus is a subscription service that enables Visual Voicemail on the iPhone (iOS 4.3 or greater) to provide you with a new user-friendly, visual interface that simplifies the management of your voice messages.

    To turn on MessageBank Plus on your iPhone, send an SMS to 144 saying VVM ON.

    To complete the setup of MessageBank Plus:

    1. Go to the phone app on your iPhone
    2. Select Voicemail
    3. If this is your first time setting up voicemail, it’ll ask you to Set up now
    4. If prompted to set a PIN, set a 6-digit PIN. You’ll be asked to re-enter this and it must not be repeating or consecutive digits
    5. Choose a default greeting or select Custom to record a personalised greeting.

    Manage MessageBank

    To change your MessageBank greeting:

    1. Call 101
    2. You’ll hear new voice messages first, then the MessageBank main menu
    3. Press 3 for Mailbox Setup
    4. Press 1 for Greetings
    5. Press 1 to re-record your personal greeting.

    When a caller has hung up after your greeting and didn’t leave a message, we may send an SMS message to let you know which is called a hang-up message.

    To turn on or off hang-up messages:

    1. Call 101 on your Telstra mobile.
    2. You'll hear any new voice messages first. Press ** to go to the MessageBank main menu
      • Press 3 for Mailbox Setup
      • Press 6 for Hang-up Message service
    3. Follow the prompts to turn it on or off.

    To extend your ring time:

    1. Dial **61*101** then the number of seconds you want to extend your ring time to - 15, 20, 25 or 30 - then finish with #
    2. Press Call/Send
    3. You’ll see a screen confirming your ring time extension has been successful.

    Example: To extend your ring time to 30 seconds, you’d dial **61*101**30#.

    Important

    To extend ring time beyond 15 seconds on Apple devices, you must turn Live Voicemail off.

    Within Australia:

    Call 101 on your Telstra mobile.

    From a different phone:

    1. Dial your mobile number
    2. When you hear your MessageBank greeting, press #
    3. You'll be prompted to enter your PIN.

    From overseas:

    Call +61101 when you’re outside Australia.

    Good to know

    Calling MessageBank from overseas will use your International Roaming voice allowance.

    To delete MessageBank messages:

    1. Dial 101 on your phone
    2. As each voicemail plays, press 5 to delete it
    3. Repeat step two for all old voicemail messages you want to delete.

    Message2Txt

    With Message2Txt, callers who can't get through to you can leave a 10-second message that is converted to text and sent to you as an SMS. 

    Good to know

    If you activate MessageBank, Message2Txt will be turned off until you deactivate MessageBank.

    Turn Message2Txt on or off

    To turn Message2Txt on:

    Send an SMS to 144 with the following text: DCF On.
     

    To turn Message2Txt off:

    Send an SMS to 144 with the following text: DCF Off.
     

    To find out the current Message2Txt status:

    Send an SMS to 144 with the following text: DCF Status.

    Important

    MessageBank and Message2Txt both need to be off for your phone to have no voicemail service.

    Manage Message2Txt

    The Message2Txt service will do its best to convert the caller's message accurately into a text message, but if the caller's voice or words are unclear, the translation to text may not be accurate.

    We may use a third party to assist in the translation of a voice message.

    The text message should take less than four minutes to arrive after the caller leaves the voice message, but in some instances may take up to 20 minutes.

    The caller's voice message isn’t stored and is unable to be retrieved.

    Apple Live Voicemail

    Live Voicemail is Apple’s on-device voicemail service and is used when the device is connected to a mobile network or Wi-Fi. It’s turned on by default from iOS 18 onwards.

    The greeting used is from MessageBank's Visual Voicemail, the ring time is 15 seconds and voicemails left will not be accessible through 101.

    Turn off Live Voicemail

    For more information on usage, visit Apple’s information on Using Live Voicemail on your iPhone.

    To turn off Live Voicemail on your device:

    1. Go to Settings
    2. Select Apps
    3. Select Phone
    4. Select Live Voicemail and turn it off.

    Manage Apple Live Voicemail

    After a call, you can find voicemails captured by your phone with Live Voicemail in the Voicemail tab of the Phone app.

    If you miss or reject a call when Live Voicemail is active, incoming voicemails will be saved to your phone, not to Telstra MessageBank.

    To extend ring time beyond 15 seconds, you must turn Live Voicemail off and follow the instructions for MessageBank.

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