iMessage and Facetime Activation Error

For anyone trying to figure this out, like I was for a week, most of the things in the forums didn't work, but this is how I solved the problem, so my iMessage and FaceTime wouldn't work on my new iD mobile iPhone which I had ported over from EE, so the solution was to go into the settings of your iPhone, scroll down until you see the “Phone” section and click on it, once here click on “My Number” part and delete all the digits and click save, then turn your iPhone off and back on, then go back into the “My Number” section and add your number back in, this should reset it, now go to settings again and search message, click on send and receive and select your number and deselect and other number or email, now do the same for FaceTime by searching facetime at the top of the settings, do the same as with message and it should be working after this. This is how I got mine to stop working before every time I tried to use my number it would say error whole activating. I hope this helped!

Hi, thanks for this. It’s been over a week since this issue started and I’ve spoken to Apple many times. They’re trying to put me in contact with their engineers which makes me believe it’s not an issue on their end. I can’t seem to reach anyone from ID though, so I’m not really sure what to do now. Thanks anyways ^^

After a lengthy conversation with Apple, and trying all of the above solutions, they advised me to wait at least 48 hours before trying anything else. 48 hours later I retried by turning iMessage/FaceTime on and off in settings and my transferred number just connected! I think the whole process takes longer than the 24 hours advised. If after 48 hours your phone number still isn’t correctly linked, I suggest talking with Apple. They’re pretty helpful and will guide you through some solutions via screen share. Hope this helps :) 

Hi @jordbarker 

What number is shown when you go to Settings > [Your Profile] > Name, Numbers, Emails?  Is this the one you ported over to us?

Have you turned your phone on and left it for a few mins without a SIM in?  Then turned the phone off, re-inserted the SIM, and turned it on again?

Are you 100% certain the number you’re looking to port to us has moved over?  Your old network SIM should no longer work if that is the case.

Hi @CherieJ 

We are sorry to hear these steps did not work and you were unable to fix this issue with Apple. Please can you also try the following: 

Could you go to Settings > [Your Profile] > Name, Numbers, Emails
and then ensure within there that the correct number is showing?

You may possibly need to log out of iCloud or Apple ID in order to make the change.

Another method that has worked in the past for others is as follows...

Turn off the iPhone > Take out your SIM
Turn the iPhone back on (no SIM) > Leave on for a few minutes or so.

Turn off the phone > Pop the iD Mobile SIM back in the iPhone

Turn back on.

The other thing we would advise trying is doing a full factory restore on the handset. Please ensure your handset is backed up to date to iCloud before doing this. Once backed up, you will need to go Settings > General > Reset > Erase all content settings.

-Mohsin

Hi @CherieJ,

We’re sorry to hear about this, the phone may still be using settings which contain your iD Mobile phone number before the port occurred. Please can you try the below steps to see if this helps?

1)    Turn off iMessage (Settings > Messages)
2)    Restart your phone (by pressing and holding the on/off button)
3)    Tap Settings > Phone > My Number and confirm that it is correct. 
4)    If it is not correct, please enter the correct number
5)    Turn iMessage back to On (Settings > Messages)
6)    Finally, go to Settings > Messages > Send & Receive and see if the correct number is displayed under “Start new conversations from:”. 

If they don’t help, please try going to Settings > General > Reset > Reset Network Settings and let us know how things go.

Ryan