Recently, the practice of wireless carriers deliberately including long voicemail messages to earn more ARPU (average revenue per user) was brought to light by David Pogue from the New York Times. His efforts have paid off, as the moment he wrote this article, thousands of angry e-mails were sent to the top four wireless carriers – Verizon Wireless, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint.
Under pressure from this public outcry, most network carriers have responded positively. Gizmodo says that AT&T has said that it is actively exploring how to make its messages shorter. It further added that visual voicemail is a priority now. Visual voicemail will eliminate the need for voicemail messages.
T-Mobile has stated that this issue has their attention; therefore hopefully some action will be taken in the not too distant future. Sprint explained that users already have the option of switching off extended messages on their service and gives the steps.
Verizon Wireless was the only network carrier that did not respond positively.
Overall, it looks like the campaign is yielding good results.