Delivery of voice data from multimedia messaging service messages

In a communication system, a method of enabling a recipient having a recipient device that is not Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS)-enabled to receive audio content from an MMS message and to respond thereto, comprising:

• sending audio content of an MMS message to a recipient, including:
• receiving the MMS message from a sender device without the sender device placing a call to the recipient, the message including only audio content, wherein the sender device is associated with a message server that forwards the MMS message and the recipient device is not associated with the message server;
• storing the audio content in a first interactive voice response (IVR) system from which the recipient accesses the audio content;
• and
• initiating transmission of a Short Message Service (SMS) notification to the recipient device, the SMS notification including information permitting the recipient device to access the voice content from the first IVR system;
• and
• sending a reply from the recipient to the sender of the MMS message, including:
• in the first IVR system, recording a reply message that is created by the recipient and is to be delivered to the sender;
• transcoding the audio content of the reply message to an MMS format to create an MMS reply message;
• and
• initiating transmission of the MMS reply message to the sender device.

In a communication system, a method of initiating delivery of a Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) message to a recipient, the method comprising:

• receiving an MMS message designating a recipient device of a recipient at a message server from a sender device without the sender device placing a call to the recipient, wherein the sender device is associated with the message server and the recipient device is not associated with the message server, wherein the recipient device does not have the capability of directly processing the MMS message, the MMS message including only audio content;
• storing the audio content of the MMS message;
• determining an alternate mechanism for apprising the recipient about the audio content of the MMS message;
• and
• transmitting the stored audio content of the MMS message to the recipient.