iMessage won’t activate…

[davidfaulkner]

Hello,

iMessage and FaceTime won’t activate after porting from EE to VF. I have:

- Signed out of iCloud and signed back in after turning my iPhone 12 on/off

- Checked the correct number is showing in Settings/Phone

- Turned iMessage on/off

- Turned FaceTime on/off

- Unbarred premium numbers in My Vodafone.

Data, VM, SMS all work. I contacted Apple Support and they did some remote diagnostics and stated VF are blocking short code SMS which is required to validate my number for iMessage. Please could I have some help to get this resolved? 

[AnnS]

There was a previous thread posted last week with exactly the same problem here @davidfaulkner 

https://forum.vodafone.co.uk/t5/iOS/Iphone-14-imessage-and-Facetime-not-working-shambolic/td-p/27177...

A replacement SIM or changing to eSIM solved the problem.

If the suggestions on the thread as on the linked thread speak to the Social Team and they will help.

[davidfaulkner]

I saw eSim seemed to be the solution too. I requested one earlier today, however haven’t received the email with QR code yet. I take it it’s normal for it take 24 hours for an eSim? I dare not request it again as I don’t want to end up without service! I was previously a VF customer and eSim was instant so not sure why it didn’t come through straight away. So I’m still on the physical SIM card. 

Thank you!

[davidfaulkner]

I’m afraid eSim does not fix the issue. I have a suspicion that EE hold on to the iMessage number, or perhaps leaves a footprint on the Apple device on where the number needs to verify - such as an EE address rather than Vodafone. It’s very frustrating as I didn’t have this issue when I moved from O2 to Vodafone.

I’m back in contact with Apple, saw that apparently a Senior Advisor can unlock something on Apple’s side. It’s weird as according to the Apple deregister tool I don’t have an iMessage number registered at all.

[davidfaulkner]

Grateful for an advisor to get in touch who can get me through to the porting team please. Thanks.

[davidfaulkner]

For those who are reading this in the future, it finally did resolve itself. I turned off all bars - particularly the spend cap of £10 - which specifically states it blocks shortcode SMS texts which iMessage uses to activate iMessage invisibly in the background. I left the phone overnight and it activated immediately in the morning once I’d toggled iMessage on/off.

This was definitely a network issue. I restored my iPhone from scratch (whilst retaining the new eSim) and it didn’t fix it. Apple Support tried everything they could too. The iMessage activation SMS would not send/receive with Vodafone. Vodafone I’m afraid to say your technical support were lacking.

It seems EE might aggressively hold onto your iMessage account number, or Vodafone do a ‘split port’ where the number hasn’t fully ported over. Anyway whatever happened, it finally resolved on a Sunday morning, when the clocks changed. 

if I was going to change number in the future, I would consider deactivating my iMessage number first using the Apple deregister website. This should hopefully remove it from the mobile network. That said I didn’t have this problem when I moved to O2 or EE, just back to VF from EE.

[mblinko]

On my new iPhone 14 which had a number ported from EE the above did not help.  On each reboot I was getting the message that the provider would charge for SMS messages and was that OK. I answered yes and turned off iMessage and FaceTime and rebooted.   Again the SMS charge message came up and on turning on iMessage and FaceTime the number would not work. I repeated this several times to be sure. What did work was

1.  Turn off iMessage and Facetime

2. reboot and answer OK to the sms charge message

3. Reboot again. The sms charge message does not appear. 
4.  Turn on iMessage and FaceTime and bingo, it registered immediately