An improved system and method to provide important information either, as voice, text, picture, holographic image or video from the calling party to a called party before the called party answers a telephone. The information may be a live or recorded voice, text, image or video message. The calling party may send a voice message, for example, and send it along with a call set-up message. The voice message may be recorded beforehand, recorded as part of the dialing process, or sent live before the call is answered. Instead of the called party's telephone ringing, the recorded voice message is played or the real-time data / bearer stream is heard. The called party hears the voice message instead of the ring tone normally heard when there is an incoming telephone call. If the telephone is not answered, the calling party is sent to voicemail or mms-storage system, where the calling party is given the option to record a voice message which may or may not include the original recorded or live voice message sent along with the call set-up message. Alternatively if the called party has a follow me service, the other contact numbers are attempted as directed in the user preferences before sending the calling party to voicemail. If the calling and called party have telephones, such as mobile phones, IP phones, IP softphones, PDA with telephony capabilities, etc., which allow for multimedia messages such as text, images and video messages, the calling party's recorded voice message may include text, images or video.