Provision of voice mail messaging indicator and voice mail access services via common instant communications clients

An approach is provided for supporting telephony services over a data network. The approach aggregate message waiting indication information from one or more voice mail systems for notifying a user of the presence of a voice mail message resident on any one of the voice mail systems. According to a user profile, a notification message is transmitted over the data network to one or more instant communication clients based upon the aggregated message waiting indication information, wherein the notification message specifies the presence of the voice mail message.