iPhone is locked at SIM Level too
June 29, 2007
I got my iPhone today. So I tried different stuff. First, I could’nt use my phone number that belonged to a business account. It asked me to contact customer care and they had no clue on what the error is and I wasted about 30 mins on that. When I asked the AT&T rep on how to activate my number from a biz account, she said it cannot be done and she suggested me to return my iPhone for my account to work. Are they kidding? Anyway, after putting me on hold for several times, she gave me some contact info of National Biz Ordering center and they are open during weekdays only.
I later went ahead and signed up a new account.
After the activation is complete, I thought my other AT&T SIM Card would work, but iPhone throws a SIM Card Error and it asked me to reactivate the phone. Well, I did try few things, but no luck. I cant believe this….it is not just locked at the carrier, but also at the SIM Card level too.
Update: I was able to get this working. If you want to use your Biz Phone Number with the iPhone, follow this procedure.
- Activate your iPhone signing up for a new account. You’ll get a new phone number
- After the activation is completed, insert your other SIM card. It’ll throw a SIM Card Error. It’ll ask you to activate again.
- Activate again with your existing SIM Card in, but provide the details of the number you previously got
- AT&T will say that it’ll activate it after verification. Give it few hours time. You’ll get a confirmation from AT&T to your email address once activated
- Once activated, your new SIM should work fine
- Now, you can cancel your new phone number saying that you dont have service at your house (I need to try this yet). Will do next week
Don’t you have 30 days to cancel you new phone number without paying an early termination fee, anyway?
I beleive you should be able to cancel it within 30 days. I didnt check if they have any special rules for iPhones.
I believe it’s 14 days for the iPhone. So you might want to go ahead and cancel it sooner rather than later.
Excellent Raju. I wonder if this will work with pre-pay top-up cards you can get at AT&T. interesting to try it out
Nik:
I will try it out and let u know. I think it sure will work, but every time a new SIM is inserted, you need to activate it seperately. This doesnt impact your Sync settings etc.
[...] iPhone is locked at SIM Level too I got my iPhone today. So I tried different stuff. First, I could’nt use my phone number that belonged to a […] [...]
You’ll incur a $175 charge when you try to cancel the new line you activated, despite getting no subsidy. If you had bought any other phone, you would not have had this problem.
Hope it’s worth it.
Awesome dude. Raju, you are the man. Joel will love you forever.
David