A method and system for sending a voice message in a wireless communication network. A mobile station may encode an audio speech signal into a voice mail message and send the voice mail message through a wireless network to a voice mail server. An entity of the wireless network may first receive the message and determine if an intended recipient is another mobile station. If so, the entity may simply forward to voice mail message on to the voice mail server. If not, the entity may transcode the voice mail message into another format and then send the formatted voice mail message to the voice mail server, which stores the voice mail message for later delivery to the intended recipient.