Some time during last night two voice messages were delivered to my phone. The later one was sent at around 8am yesterday morning, so it took between 16 and 24 hours to get through the system. The earlier one was sent at 7pm the previous evening, so that took maybe 36 hours! I've spoken to the person who sent both messages.

Why is the messaging service here so poor?

That happens to me on a couple of the services here in the states too. Helio (sprint network) is much better in that regard and Verizon was fine too, but Nextel and AT&T were both horrid for that.

But just this morning I received an SMS that was from my wife sent yesterday midday. So maybe Helio is having trouble now too.