Patent ID: 8144843

Claim:
A system for enabling a user to access a voicemail service comprising: a network element in communication with a customer premises equipment, the network element comprising: a supplementary service processor operative to: receive a sequence of characters from the customer premises equipment, wherein the sequence of characters is a predetermined dialing sequence; associate the customer premises equipment with a caller identifier; generate a query to a supplementary service database in response to receiving the sequence of characters to determine whether the network element supports a supplementary service and to determine whether a user has access to a voicemail service based on the caller identifier; and receive a call forwarding number from the supplementary service database when the network element supports the supplementary service and the user has access to the voicemail service; wherein the first network element is operative to connect the customer premises equipment with the voicemail service in response to receiving the call forwarding number and the caller identifier; and wherein the network element is further operative to prevent access to the voicemail service in response to a determination that the user does not have access to the voicemail service based on the caller identifier.