iPhone 3G S Customers Reporting Activation Delays [Archive]

MacRumors

Jun 19, 2009, 04:05 PM

http://www.macrumors.com/images/macrumorsthreadlogo.gif (http://www.macrumors.com/2009/06/19/iphone-3g-s-customers-reporting-activation-delays/)

A number of iPhone 3G S customers in the U.S. are reporting problems activating their new purchases for use. According to a message displayed during the activation process, it may take up to 48 hours for activations to go through.Due to current iPhone activation volumes, it may take up to 48 hours to resolve your issue. We will send a confirmation to {e-mail address redacted} once your activation is complete. We apologize for any inconvenience this causes. You can set up your iPhone and enjoy features that do not require access to the AT&T network. To get started, please disconnect and then reconnect your iPhone.Several MacRumors forum members have reported that they have had success by calling AT&T and having a representative assist them with activation, while others have reported that AT&T representatives have simply told them that nothing can be done to speed up the process.

Article Link: iPhone 3G S Customers Reporting Activation Delays (http://www.macrumors.com/2009/06/19/iphone-3g-s-customers-reporting-activation-delays/)

DELLsFan

Jun 19, 2009, 04:07 PM

Well, what should you expect from a pig - but a grunt - especially on a day like today? :D

macintel4me

Jun 19, 2009, 04:08 PM

This seems like a annual ritual now. Getting better and better though! :D

ebutka

Jun 19, 2009, 04:09 PM

Mine worked...

k2director

Jun 19, 2009, 04:11 PM

thomasfxlt

Jun 19, 2009, 04:12 PM

I bought my 3G S at an ATT store this morning at 10am CST. They activated it in about a minute. I bought my gen 1 and gen 2 iPhones at the Apple Store. The first one activated great. The 2nd one with the in-store activation was a total pain. I opted for ATT locally this time which saved me a 2 hour drive and apparently an activation hassle.

Very worth it regardless. (snappilicious)

iSee

Jun 19, 2009, 04:12 PM

Oh, AT&T. Another nail in the coffin we're preparing for your use on the day your exclusive deal with Apple expires.

trptdude

Jun 19, 2009, 04:13 PM

seemed like my activation was hanging.......then I ejected the SIM card with the little tool in the packaging and replaced it and the phone activated immediately - worth a try - TC

silverbelly

Jun 19, 2009, 04:14 PM

Apparently Rogers is having some of the same issues here in Canada (or Calgary at least). Was at the Rogers store today and they said that many of the 32GB iPhones are not activating right now.

chr1s60

Jun 19, 2009, 04:15 PM

I had a problem with my 1st gen iPhone that I bought on iDay. I wasn't able to get it activated until the next day at about noon. I had to actually call and talk with someone twice before it actually worked. I would recommend that anyone having problems call AT&T.

mdwsta4

Jun 19, 2009, 04:16 PM

i really don't care as long as i can check out the other features. but will it deactivate my 1st gen iphone's sim? then i'll be pissed if i'm phone-less for up to 2 days.
my 3gs got delivered at 9am, but i don't have my laptop to activate/sync it.

diabolic

Jun 19, 2009, 04:16 PM

Oh, AT&T. Another nail in the coffin we're preparing for your use on the day your exclusive deal with Apple expires.

Yes, because Verizon would somehow magically be able to handle the activation process better than AT&T can...

I doubt any other carrier has ever had to handle as many activations in one day as AT&T does with the iPhone.

williamtcforsyt

Jun 19, 2009, 04:17 PM

Although I'm in the UK on O2, I'm still so pleased I asked them to activate my 16GB iPhone 3GS in store. I was first in line at a store so I thought that my chances of it activating quickly would be high

Oh and my iPhone 3GS is much more than I thought it might be, so quick at opening everything. I even think syncing has significantly increased in speed!

Just a bit depressed I've spent £440 on it!

hyllus

Jun 19, 2009, 04:18 PM

For what it's worth, I activated a new line today with an iPhone 3G S in an AT&T store in a matter of a few minutes. A friend of mine did the same.

foshizzle

Jun 19, 2009, 04:19 PM

picked my phone up this morning 730 AM EST, opted to activate it at home. Took almost no time to activate, and i was up and running.

MUCH better than last year's 2.0 OS / 3G release on the same morning. My sister and I's phones took 5 hours to re-activate after the OS install, and we had just left on a trip after we DLd the update. Luckily I have an ATT laptop card and could keep trying activation on the road.

I also got 3.0 OS for my original phone about 5 minutes after it release wednesday, had zero problems with it.

Getting better i guess, but with the volume of users activating I'm not surprised things are getting bogged down.

Hey ATT - get a new IT staff that knows how to batch update people's iPhones to support MMS and tethering, AND can run a server farm to keep up with activations.

joelonamac

Jun 19, 2009, 04:20 PM

For the two phones I picked up at the AT&T store, and for a friend's phone that came via UPS from the Apple store, restarting did the trick.

iPhoneNYC

Jun 19, 2009, 04:20 PM

This activation problem has crept up the past two "big" first days. It's a drag but it seems easier to simply wait a day or two and then everything goes fine. In New York on the first day of the 1st gen the phone lines cleared after midnight. I guess maybe that's why those people were waiting at 6AM - not because of getting the phone first but getting to activation first!

rdowns

Jun 19, 2009, 04:20 PM

Oh, AT&T. Another nail in the coffin we're preparing for your use on the day your exclusive deal with Apple expires.

Oh please. This would happen with any provider. None of their systems are designed to handle hundreds of thousands of activations in a day.

Lostanddamned

Jun 19, 2009, 04:21 PM

seemed like my activation was hanging.......then I ejected the SIM card with the little tool in the packaging and replaced it and the phone activated immediately - worth a try - TC

Same deal here in the UK. Ejecting and reinserting worked - I had put the SIM in whilst the phone was powered off too.

That said my MMS still hasn't been activated, but I imagine it will be before the AT&T ones are :p - O2 texted me to say about 2-3 days at most.

Then to sort out tethering - and all is good.

sziehr

Jun 19, 2009, 04:21 PM

I disagree with the VZW could not handle the volume. They would set up some sort of temporary network to be ready for it or localize it. They run out Mules or temp cell sites to more place more often than att. I know this to be true i have one of the largest festivals in the country in my back yard Bonnaroo. I never loose signal or call degradation while the some 100,000 extra people show up. I just think lazyness and cost is the factor here.

jtropeano

Jun 19, 2009, 04:21 PM

I went to the 5th avenue store today at 10:00 AM to wait in line to buy my girlfriend an iPhone (she's currently on Verizon). I got to the desk, got an agent at 10:30, and didn't walk out of the store until 1:45 PM. And that was after I decided to not even attempt to do a port at the store. Anyway. The rep was super nice, friendly, entertaining... but that doesn't buy back my time.

MY iPhone, that I had shipped to my office, upon plugging it in, isn't activating. I get the delay message everyone here is talking about. Bah!

I'm going to try to pop out the SIM card, but doubt it'll work. We'll see!

- J

beerguy

Jun 19, 2009, 04:21 PM

Mine say waiting for about 30 minutes. I popped the sim out, put it back in and bingo - phone activated. It could have been a coincidence but it got me going.

TB Apple

Jun 19, 2009, 04:22 PM

Fed-Ex arrived at 10:30 and had a little hiccup with activation (had to unplug and restart phone), but up and running after about 10 miniutes :)

Mr Maui

Jun 19, 2009, 04:23 PM

The possibility of having delays when there are hundreds of thousands of phones trying to be activated in one day should be considered a normal possibility. After the weekend, activations will likely happen without delay or issue.

JohnnyQuest

Jun 19, 2009, 04:24 PM

My activation was smooth as could be. Took 5 minutes maybe, and then an alert was sent to my phone that said "activated." That really suck though for all the ones that will take 48 hours :(

km1116

Jun 19, 2009, 04:24 PM

Does this apply to new activations only? What if I'm upgrading from a First Generation phone?

ITNinja

Jun 19, 2009, 04:25 PM

I kept getting a 'wait for activation' message on my phone after getting one in iTunes. After three hours of waiting I called AT&T and the guy got an Apple support tech on the same line as he was unable to assist me. The tech from Apple put me on hold after trying a few things and came back on the line only to say that they were experiencing larger than usual activation requests (who would have thought) and to just keep the phone plugged into iTunes and eventually it will be activated.

Meanwhile I'm staring at my 1st Gen iPhone with the 'E' in the upper-left of the screen wondering if it would work on my 3GS. I popped out the SIM and it had the 3G logo on it just like the SIM from the 3GS so I put it in my 3GS phone and it works just fine 3G and all.

I'm keeping the SIM from the 3GS handy just incase I find my old SIM disconnected. It sucks for my wife who already had a case and everything ready for the hand-me-down 1st Gen :p

Suppose I'll try again tomorrow and if still a no-go will head over to an AT&T store.

dukishdary

Jun 19, 2009, 04:26 PM

this may or may not have already been mentioned. i apologize in advance for not having the time to skim through all the comments as i'm still at work :)

for the past year i have been using an iphone 3G and this morning purchased a 3G S. they activated the new SIM card (that came with the 3G S) instead of recommending I just swap the old one with the new. as a result, i received the message: "waiting for activation. this may take some times." after an hour, a friend emailed me with the following recommendation to activate my phone and it worked immediately.

first, i turned off my old, 3G phone (don't ask me why i hadn't done this already). then, i power cycled the 3G S (turn off and then on again). within seconds the phone notified me that it was activated.

i realize this explanation is extremely simple and may only apply to people that are activating a new SIM card. this solution probably won't help people experiencing delays with itunes. but hey i thought i'd mention it in case someone is stuck in a similar situation.

syklee26

Jun 19, 2009, 04:26 PM

interesting....I activated my phone at 3:30pm ET or so and it took me less than 2 minutes literally.

levpa05

Jun 19, 2009, 04:26 PM

I did have an issue that I had to take mine into an AT&T. I purchased from Apple and it was shipped, arrived at 10 AM. I called Apple to activate it, they put me through to AT&T, then ran into an issue. I went into the AT&T and they had it activated quickly, I didn't have to wait the 48 hrs. Which there was a message on the activation it could take up to that time. So AT&T fixed it for me on Two iPhones.

Matthew Yohe

Jun 19, 2009, 04:29 PM

Transfer of number from 1st gen iPhone to 3GS took about 2 minutes here.

bbrosemer

Jun 19, 2009, 04:31 PM

Transfer of number from 1st gen iPhone to 3GS took about 2 minutes here.

Did you do it through apple or ATT ... they are both driving me crazy I am really getting mad with both of them ... They sent me the right phone with the wrong number... Att says it is apple's fault apple says its att's fault ... together I am getting nothing done and they are both pushing this... and really bothering me..

So ATT tells me to put the sim from my old 3g into the new ... doesn't work ... apple tells me not to do that ... and to call att to transfer the # but the # is associated with the phone apparently because when I switch sims the phone does nothing different ... This is getting to be reallllly annoying ...

SkottDMD

Jun 19, 2009, 04:31 PM

Apparently Rogers is having some of the same issues here in Canada (or Calgary at least). Was at the Rogers store today and they said that many of the 32GB iPhones are not activating right now.

The issue was with both the 16GB and 32GB phones, systems were rejecting the IEMI numbers with a "cannot upgrade" message. I luckily didn't have that problem with mine but it still took three hours of being on hold for the poor people working at Future Shop before they could upgrade my phone. This launch is a mess, just as bad as last year if not worse. Rogers really needs to step up internal communications because no one has a clue what the hell is going on.

bastula

Jun 19, 2009, 04:31 PM

seemed like my activation was hanging.......then I ejected the SIM card with the little tool in the packaging and replaced it and the phone activated immediately - worth a try - TC

This worked a charm. Was sitting around waiting for about 2 hours and just tried it. Worked instantaneously. Thank you! :p

jcxstar13

Jun 19, 2009, 04:32 PM

So My girlfriend being the awesome girlfriend she is wants a iphone and dosent care if its 3g or 3gS so she is signing up and getting a 3gs and then going to trade with me for my 3g 16 gig white one. That being said we were going to pre order from att online but by the time we got around to that there they were sold out. So we did the next thing we thought would be the easiest we pre ordered it from best buy. We were asked to make an appointment so we just picked a time in the afternoon that we figured it wouldn't be busy. So we go to the store earlier than are scheduled appointment and they say sorry were too busy but we can move your appointment up to 2:30 so we left and came back around 2:40 (ran a lil late with traffic) to get here to be turned away yet again saying that they didn't have enough time to set it up. WTF Just sell us the phone and let us leave the store. If we pre ordered from att im sure we would just have to set it up through iTunes so let us do the same and stop pissing me off. So i am writing this at best buy on a macbook air while my girlfriend finally is getting to buy her phone and as you can tell they have seriously pissed me off today. Avoid Worst Buy at all costs for you iphone purchase unless you can be punctual and dont mind them trying to sell you all sorts of **** you dont need.

WallyBird

Jun 19, 2009, 04:32 PM

Last year I attempted to buy and activate a 3G on launch day. After almost 5 days (read: 5 DAYS) neither ATT nor Apple could get it activated (and by the end each said it was the others' problem). I returned the unit never having been able to use it.

I try again this year with 3Gs I am hoping for better luck! It appears per fedex to be waiting for me at home, I might wait til Mond or Tuesday to activate just to be safe since Apple servers (once again) are not up to the task.

jerrycrum

Jun 19, 2009, 04:33 PM

mine said the same thing then i just took the sim card from my old phone and put it into this one and it said phone activated and started working right away...

ZiggyPastorius

Jun 19, 2009, 04:36 PM

I just called AT&T, and the lady called the contract acceptance number for me and within about ten minutes, the phone was activated.

treyjustice

Jun 19, 2009, 04:37 PM

i bought mine at the apple store i told them not to open it took it home and had it activated in 5 minutes!

:D

djdole

Jun 19, 2009, 04:37 PM

Bought mine at 12:30 pst.
And now... "Waiting for activation. This may take some time." -_- :(

williamtcforsyt

Jun 19, 2009, 04:38 PM

Same deal here in the UK. Ejecting and reinserting worked - I had put the SIM in whilst the phone was powered off too.

That said my MMS still hasn't been activated, but I imagine it will be before the AT&T ones are :p - O2 texted me to say about 2-3 days at most.

Then to sort out tethering - and all is good.

I found that by trying to send MMS's twice (they failed) and then switching to airport mode then reactivating cellular - prompted the SMS from O2 saying "we 'll let you know when it's working" Could have just been a fluke but it worked. Tethering working for me to, surprisingly quick. Don't forget not to overuse it as apparently 'unlimited' to O2 actually means 'within reason'

ckurt25

Jun 19, 2009, 04:38 PM

It was an upgrade from a 3G. Fired it up, plugged in the usb cable to my macbook, launched iTunes and it worked fine. Had it shipped from Apple to work. It arrived in our mail room (big office) at 9:45 AM EST and had it in my hands by 10:05 and it was probably activated and ready to restore from my old 3G by 10:30. Didn't feel like it took too long. Once that was done I sync'd the apps, music, movies and all that and have been very happy with it so far.

minik

Jun 19, 2009, 04:39 PM

Strange. I turned off my iPhone 3G S and started it up again. It's fully activated.

pavyaz19

Jun 19, 2009, 04:39 PM

Restarting my phone worked for me.

illw!l

Jun 19, 2009, 04:39 PM

Upgrading from a 2G and took only a few minutes. No hitch.

mattlangston

Jun 19, 2009, 04:40 PM

I activated my iPhone 3gs 30 minutes ago. My original iPhone 2g stopped working 15 minutes ago while I was on the line with AT&T trying to accelerate the activation process (at the suggestion of previous commenters).

Now both iPhones don't work. No worries though. Thank you to Apple and AT&T for a great product :)

Warmest regards, Matt

garty

Jun 19, 2009, 04:41 PM

Switching to and from airplane mode did the trick for me (as probably would power cycling)

jphall

Jun 19, 2009, 04:44 PM

For the two phones I picked up at the AT&T store, and for a friend's phone that came via UPS from the Apple store, restarting did the trick.

I got mine at the Apple Store, they plugged it into their computer, after which they said I could wait for activation, or take it home and it would likely activate on the way.

Almost home, still not connected, so I restarted the iPhone. Upon reboot it said it was activated. It may have been coincidental, but after reading the above post I'm thinking it was not.

Currently restoring from the backup I did right before I left for the Store. Oh, now it's updating my Apps to the new phone.

Looking Good!

Best wishes to all in Appleland. ::grin::

jtropeano

Jun 19, 2009, 04:45 PM

Update:

Popping out the SIM and reinsterting didn't do anything for me. Still waiting for activation.

Any other tricks?

swim4life9

Jun 19, 2009, 04:45 PM

what is the phone number that people called?

Mr Maui

Jun 19, 2009, 04:47 PM

gehrbox

Jun 19, 2009, 04:48 PM

I just activated mine 20 minutes ago and it was complete within 5 minutes.

iphone-3gs

Jun 19, 2009, 04:49 PM

in brampton,ont,canada we are also having the same problem:mad:

MHjoey

Jun 19, 2009, 04:50 PM

Back in 2007, I waited 30 hours during launch weekend for my original iPhone to be activated. That was the longest, most depressing 30 hours of my life....

On the other hand, my 3G S activated within about 10 minutes this morning on the West Coast....

I just called customer service.
Be nice to them and they will definately help you out right away.

Well, that's what happened to me. Good luck!!

iphone-3gs

Jun 19, 2009, 04:52 PM

Does your computer have to be a mac to activate it or can you use a windows computer ?

jtropeano

Jun 19, 2009, 04:52 PM

Does your computer have to be a mac to activate it or can you use a windows computer ?

Can be either, as long as you're using iTunes.

jtropeano

Jun 19, 2009, 04:53 PM

I just called customer service.
Be nice to them and they will definately help you out right away.

Well, that's what happened to me. Good luck!!

What # did you call?

iphone-3gs

Jun 19, 2009, 04:53 PM

Can be either, as long as you're using iTunes.

Ok thanks a TON !

AgingGeek

Jun 19, 2009, 04:54 PM

Mine took less than an hour. I bought around 11:45 am PST. Though, I didn't get a signal until I'd plugged it into MY computer, and "registered" (for a second time?). So it's not clear how long it really took. This extra step was not explained to me.

macrobat

Jun 19, 2009, 04:55 PM

seemed like my activation was hanging.......then I ejected the SIM card with the little tool in the packaging and replaced it and the phone activated immediately - worth a try - TC
worked like a charm for me just took my sim from my 3g and it activated :D

bbrosemer

Jun 19, 2009, 04:56 PM

mine said the same thing then i just took the sim card from my old phone and put it into this one and it said phone activated and started working right away...

That didn't work for me ... this is bordering on ... realllllly bothering me.!

NewSc2

Jun 19, 2009, 04:57 PM

So if I'm upgrading from a 2G iPhone... do I swap the SIM card, or do I just transfer via iTunes?

PezRadar

Jun 19, 2009, 04:58 PM

Mine took 7 mins. The AT&T Rep even said "Wow fastest I've seen ANY phone change over ever".

jersey

Jun 19, 2009, 04:58 PM

It took about an hour here, and didnt happen until I plugged into my machine in the studio.

It was unactivated while I walked from the 5th ave store back to 50th and 9th.

Nocaster

Jun 19, 2009, 04:59 PM

I saw this article when my phone had been in "waiting to activate" mode for about 5 minutes.

Just when I thought "uh-oh", my restore finished and auto restarted my phone. When it came back up the activation was complete.

mrmiagi

Jun 19, 2009, 05:00 PM

I was waiting 2 hours to have it activated. Popped out sim and put it back in. Within a few minutes, phone activated.

Edunwody

Jun 19, 2009, 05:01 PM

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X 10_5_7; en-us) AppleWebKit/530.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.1 Safari/530.18)

I had issues also but called ATT and the girl got me up and running. Took about a hour though.
ATT is dragging Apple through the mud.

Edunwody

Jun 19, 2009, 05:05 PM

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X 10_5_7; en-us) AppleWebKit/530.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.1 Safari/530.18)

Last year I attempted to buy and activate a 3G on launch day. After almost 5 days (read: 5 DAYS) neither ATT nor Apple could get it activated (and by the end each said it was the others' problem). I returned the unit never having been able to use it.

I try again this year with 3Gs I am hoping for better luck! It appears per fedex to be waiting for me at home, I might wait til Mond or Tuesday to activate just to be safe since Apple servers (once again) are not up to the task.

It's AT&T servers that would be a problem, not Apple. Apple does not activate phone service as they are not the service provider.

Apple was easy. No issues at all. It's ATT. They cant get there act together and they know that have iphone users by the short hairs. Nowhere else to go.

MacUser4_20

Jun 19, 2009, 05:06 PM

Was taking 30 minutes for my activation to hit, called AT&T removed SIM card, Rep sent activation again, reinserted SIM, and had service..

AriX

Jun 19, 2009, 05:08 PM

I activated my phone with iTunes, and it gave me this message. My phone became activated about three hours later though.

jtropeano

Jun 19, 2009, 05:09 PM

Sounds like I'm the only one that still has a problem. :-/ Maybe I should call... but I'm at work and would rather not wait in an hour long call center queue.

bbrosemer

Jun 19, 2009, 05:09 PM

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X 10_5_7; en-us) AppleWebKit/530.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.1 Safari/530.18)

Apple was easy. No issues at all. It's ATT. They cant get there act together and they know that have iphone users by the short hairs. Nowhere else to go.

No apple is just as in able to handle the large volumes today ... they sent me the wrong phone correct shipping info outside wrong invoice inside = me and the rep I am talking to think that the Serial # is tied to the phone #

silverblue3

Jun 19, 2009, 05:11 PM

A restart activated my iPhone.

thadoggfather

Jun 19, 2009, 05:12 PM

I bought the iPhone on a separate line so I did an upgrade swap (not even full subsidy, just $399/2 year pricing). It wouldn't let me activate, so I swapped it with my active sim on my line, called AT&T and got iPhone data plan tacked back on, plugged it into iTunes and it worked.

So if you aren't doing upgrade swap and you just bought the phone on your line and can't get it activated, I recommend putting your current, active SIM card into the phone and plugging it into iTunes, and then calling customer service and getting the plan added.

Let me know how it goes :)

iGary

Jun 19, 2009, 05:12 PM

Mine activated in less than two minutes.

illegalprelude

Jun 19, 2009, 05:13 PM

yea....people should really expect this to happen. Having said that, im waiting for my 32GB to activate as well but in the mean time, my iPhone works fine and im just using the time to sync content over to the 32GB anyways. I just hope though that it works sometime today and not the actual 24-48hrs that it was claimed.

orlando12

Jun 19, 2009, 05:15 PM

FYI

I called ATT and manually gave them my sim ID (From back of box)

And it was activated manually for me.

KaiMac

Jun 19, 2009, 05:16 PM

I just went through line and activated my new iPhone is less than 45 minutes total. There were no activation issues at the McArthur store. Is this a real story?

johnnyburke

Jun 19, 2009, 05:18 PM

I just swapped in my old SIM card from my 3G into my 3GS and the phone instantly activated.

caligurl

Jun 19, 2009, 05:19 PM

i had issues, called once and the lady was a ditz and told me i had to call apple.... so i hung up and called back..... got a lady who had been dealing with the issues all day and got me working (duh.... i wasn't turning OFF the phone just putting it to sleep, i guess!) and she fixed my voice mail cuz that wasn't working!

she's now on the phone with hubby to get his working!

Platano

Jun 19, 2009, 05:19 PM

The rep at AT&T told me to wait about 10 minutes and I would eventually get signal (this was after he activated it at the store). 1 hour later nothing happened, so I tried turning on airplane mode on and off. Still nothing. I called AT&T and the rep told me to turn the phone on and off, and it worked for me.

Good luck to those still waiting.

Nermal

Jun 19, 2009, 05:20 PM

I just swapped in my old SIM card from my 3G into my 3GS and the phone instantly activated.

That's what I would've thought. Unless there's something special with an iPhone (I don't own one), it's the SIM that gets activated, not the phone. Swapping the SIM should work instantly.

La Porta

Jun 19, 2009, 05:21 PM

We all knew that this was going to happen...where's the surprise?

pbrooks

Jun 19, 2009, 05:22 PM

I picked up my phone at the Apple Store in Costa Mesa, CA at 7:15AM. The credit card transaction took longer than the activation because the guy charged me the unsubsidized price. He then had to void the transaction, then recharge me the proper price. Honest mistake... I'm not complaining.

I then went to the activation guy. He plugged it in. Click click. 60 seconds later I was on my way.

amann76

Jun 19, 2009, 05:24 PM

i cant report any problems here it literally took me seconds to activate my phone... seconds

enmoor2

Jun 19, 2009, 05:24 PM

Received my 16gb iphone 3gs from fedex 3 hours ago and have been waiting for activation through itunes. I tried popping out sim card, etc without working. I just took the sim card from my blackberry and put it in the iphone and it is working!!

shoebobs

Jun 19, 2009, 05:25 PM

bummer for those having issues activating.

I activated mine at about 11:30 Seattle time and it literally took 15 seconds. I was surprised as I'm a new customer porting my number over from Verizon. Figured the port would hold it up but it went extremely fast

anthonymoody

Jun 19, 2009, 05:27 PM

I had the 48 hour notice too. Called ATT, csr was great. She hadn't heard of the issue, but got my IMEI and SIM ID from me, which I got from "Settings" and she forced the phone to activate. Had to turn the phone off then on for it to take. Took about 10 minutes on the phone with her.

One weird thing - from her side it looked at first like I hadn't accepted the T&C, which I definitely had. We walked through the voice-automated T&C thing, which said that I *had* accepted the T&C.

Anyway, ultimately no problem, though I was jealous of my wife whose 3gs activated pretty much instantly :)

TM

Love

Jun 19, 2009, 05:30 PM

I'm not sure Verizon's systems wouldn't exactly have the same issues. I have a phone on TELUS, and once a phone change to get it activated took close to two weeks. I'm not sure if it's a GSM-CDMA thing but I wouldn't exactly "get after" AT&T for a 48hour activation. IMO, that's pretty damn impressive for the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of activations.

andrewsd

Jun 19, 2009, 05:30 PM

robbmcmahan

Jun 19, 2009, 05:33 PM

This happened to me also. I first tried to reboot...no go. Then I called AT&T and they didn't want to help me and wanted me to go to a store. L-A-Z-Y! Am i'm even a corporate customer and usually get preferred service. Finally AT&T told me I would have to call Apple. I called Apple who was warm and friendly and told me that he would need to get an AT&T TECH on the phone. They had to get my new IMEI number and new sim card number. That fixed it.

If you are having this problems here is my advice....

DON'T wait 48 hours
DO call Apple, NOT AT&T

smithrh

Jun 19, 2009, 05:34 PM

No problems here at all, new iPhone user, new number...

gstylez

Jun 19, 2009, 05:36 PM

I went to AT&T this morning to get my iPhone 3G S and had no problem with activation. That sucks for the people that can't hopefully that will get fixed soon. :apple:

casmith07

Jun 19, 2009, 05:37 PM

I'm sure the servers are getting hammered on iTunes, especially now that many are off work on the east coast (after 5pm on a Friday!)

Save the trouble and go to an AT&T store. The guy told me to wait up to 3 hours for mine and it I got my "welcome to AT&T" text as I walked out of the store 10 minutes after walking in.

paulrr

Jun 19, 2009, 05:38 PM

Nothing was working for me, taking sim in/out, resetting the phone, etc.

Spent an hour on the phone with AT&T and nothing helped. They said they didnt see a "contract" on my phone and I had to go into an AT&T store and reaccept the contract.

I got mad and hung up and swapped my old iPhone sim into the new one and it works now.

kdarling

Jun 19, 2009, 05:38 PM

Having contracted on Verizon network programming projects, I can say that they take great pride in being up the traditional 99.999%. If something did go wrong once (and after all, who could predict the popularity the first time the iPhone went on sale), then Verizon would've never let it happen twice.

That said, I believe the activation holdup the first time in 2007 was because of a third party hired to provide the servers for it. Since Apple and ATT hired them, they held joint blame for any goofups.

But since 2008, I'm pretty sure the holdups have been in Apple's iTunes servers, not ATT.

In any case, it doesn't exactly give warm fuzzies to the idea of Apple handling mass notifications.

coolcom

Jun 19, 2009, 05:44 PM

I received my phone from UPS at 10am local time. It is now 3pm, still no activation.

I took my old SIM from iPhone 3G and put it in the 3GS, it works, said "iPhone activated."

I swap the SIMs (put the new sim in the 3GS) and it doesn't work. I'm just going to stick with the old SIM in the new phone for now since it's working!

diabolic

Jun 19, 2009, 05:47 PM

Called AT&T and they immediately activated mine. Hold time was less than 2 minutes.

vansouza

Jun 19, 2009, 05:47 PM

My transfer process went smoothly until the Activation; but it only took about a half hour. Then the old iPhone said no service and the new 3GS said no service so I turned it off and back on and bam it was connected. Very happy camper here...:D

Munitalp

Jun 19, 2009, 05:49 PM

Called AT&T and they immediately activated mine. Hold time was less than 2 minutes.

Do you know how? The girl I had took my sim # and imei and put it in, but still didn't get anywhere with the activation.

Sport73

Jun 19, 2009, 05:49 PM

I am trying to do the 'wife hand-me-down' operation, so we'll see how it turns out.

I got the 3GS at 3PM and immediately tried to activate using her number (she currently has a 2G phone on our family plan, but I opted - stupidly - to activate with the new SIM and new phone. Got the 'This may take a while' message.

Being impatient, and since I planned to switch them anyway, I popped my 3G SIM in and it activated immediately.

Put the new SIM into my 3g (which the wife will be taking to replace her 2G) and it's still saying "Activation - this may take some time".

Her 2G with her original SIM continues to work just fine.

SO, will it activate despite being in the 'wrong' phone? Should I just put her SIM in the 3G so we're both 'all set' with our 'new' devices?

sbrhwkp3

Jun 19, 2009, 05:49 PM

Hahaha AT&T... blowing hard, as usual. :rolleyes:

mctape

Jun 19, 2009, 05:52 PM

my activation went just fine at around 3:00 EDT. took about 45 seconds.

Matthew Yohe

Jun 19, 2009, 05:53 PM

Did you do it through apple or ATT ... they are both driving me crazy I am really getting mad with both of them ... They sent me the right phone with the wrong number... Att says it is apple's fault apple says its att's fault ... together I am getting nothing done and they are both pushing this... and really bothering me..

So ATT tells me to put the sim from my old 3g into the new ... doesn't work ... apple tells me not to do that ... and to call att to transfer the # but the # is associated with the phone apparently because when I switch sims the phone does nothing different ... This is getting to be reallllly annoying ...

iTunes. Didn't have to talk to a single person, or switch a SIM card.

djdole

Jun 19, 2009, 05:54 PM

This worked a charm. Was sitting around waiting for about 2 hours and just tried it. Worked instantaneously. Thank you! :p

Worked for me too.
Also called the store I bought it from as the tech there said it was due to overloaded ATT network from activations, and they didn't know about this fix but were happy to hear it.

illegalprelude

Jun 19, 2009, 05:57 PM

I can confirm this, just swap your own sim.

nemaslov

Jun 19, 2009, 05:57 PM

Took two hours to activate with ATT. Even though I didn't like that, it is understandable with so many starting at once. Mine came UPS via Apple. It was an upgrade from my first generation. Everything went quickly from my Mac but then it said waiting to activate... may take time. After an hour or so I went over to a nearby ATT Store (which was packed). Everyone was nice and helpful and they said it might take several hours and then all of a sudden. I was activated!!!!

RxMac

Jun 19, 2009, 05:59 PM

All I did was switch my SIM...

javaGuru

Jun 19, 2009, 06:00 PM

I started the activation process about 4 hours ago. How long has everyone else been waiting?

Howmanoid

Jun 19, 2009, 06:01 PM

Mine activated in seconds of being plugged into the dock. It's a bummer that AT&T and Apple can't get this sorted out. It causes huge problems for so many people and really takes the shine of the launch.

m-dogg

Jun 19, 2009, 06:02 PM

Bought mine this morning at an apple store and had no issues whatsoever (except maybe the hour wait to get in, with a reservation).

New iPhone owner; I just switched from Verizon and ported my #.

Chris Treborn

Jun 19, 2009, 06:03 PM

Hello MAC & APPLE friends!

I switched from my T-Mobile account over to a brand new AT&T account and although it wasn't a flawless transition, my iPhone 3G S was activated by the time I got home to plug it into my iTunes. Not too bad of a delay.

I pre-ordered my White 32GB last Tuesday and they've kept me updated with the location of my device via email. Now, I could have gone into the store at 7am, but I worked until 11am. Lucky for me, I had mine reserved and it just needed me to show up and present my ID.

Of course I bought an Apple Care Plan, but it was so easy just switching over. NOW comes the hassle of paying Prorated Phone bills through 2 companies. But I think it is well worth it.

Christian

bbrosemer

Jun 19, 2009, 06:03 PM

It is a problem on Apple's end not ATT ... I repeat apple ... messed mine up ... the phone # is tied to either the UDID or Serial by apple prior to shipping the phone ... so now I can not try to activate a phone that does not have my number ...

oncdoc

Jun 19, 2009, 06:06 PM

Seems like this is not simply a problem with overloaded itunes servers, but some technical problem having to do with activating the new sim for people who are switching phones.

There are number of people including myself who where able to activate the phone very soon after swapping sims with their old phone.

diabolic

Jun 19, 2009, 06:06 PM

I started the activation process about 4 hours ago. How long has everyone else been waiting?

I waited about 3 hours, then called AT&T and they immediately sent the activation while I was on the phone with them. This was using the new SIM in the new phone.

heisetax

Jun 19, 2009, 06:09 PM

Yes, because Verizon would somehow magically be able to handle the activation process better than AT&T can...

I doubt any other carrier has ever had to handle as many activations in one day as AT&T does with the iPhone.

I agree that this activation thing as being a thing of numbers. If there was more than one iPhone carrier in the US then there would be less of a problem.

Unless Verizon does a 180 in the way they do their business, a Verizon iPhone would have use of only 5-105 of its features. Some more could be purchased as very high rates for the service they provide. This is my feelings of my probably 8 year or more carrier Verizon.

optophobia

Jun 19, 2009, 06:09 PM

javaGuru

Jun 19, 2009, 06:09 PM

I waited about 3 hours, then called AT&T and they immediately sent the activation while I was on the phone with them. This was using the new SIM in the new phone.

I tried to call them earlier and they said they were told not to activate them manually and doing so would slow the process down for everyone else. I think I'm going to call them back now.

Iamwatson

Jun 19, 2009, 06:10 PM

I upgraded from an iPhone 3G to an iPhone 3G s. When it arrived in the mail I plugged in and activated to iTunes and received the 48 hours for activation BS.

So I waited like 20 mins and then just took the sim from my old iphone (iphone 3G) and stuck it in my new iphone 3G s and it worked immediately. I think the 48 hour activation BS is for customers who are new to the iphone.

hakala01

Jun 19, 2009, 06:11 PM

I actually just bought my iPhone 3GS about 45 minutes ago. Wasn't activating after about 15 minutes. Then I turned my iPhone 2G off, restartd the 3GS, and it was activated. They did tell me at the Apple Store that it could possibly take up to 48 hours, though. Syncing now...

freedomwan

Jun 19, 2009, 06:12 PM

I waited two hours for my phone to activate i had tried cycling power but still a nogo. then i plugged it into my computer and after it restored the phone and reset it i was activated and good to go :)

RasaFrasa

Jun 19, 2009, 06:12 PM

After 5 hours of no activation (including many reboots and other tomfoolery) I just caved and switched out SIMs from my 3G. Instantly got an activated 3G S.

Dunno if there will be a technical problem over this later, but if so I stuck my new SIM back in the box and now I'm off to enjoy my 3G S!!

rob1

Jun 19, 2009, 06:12 PM

For the two phones I picked up at the AT&T store, and for a friend's phone that came via UPS from the Apple store, restarting did the trick.

Thanks joelonamac - worked!

optophobia

Jun 19, 2009, 06:13 PM

dbwie

Jun 19, 2009, 06:13 PM

No problems at all with my activation, at about 5pm local time.

Ports

Jun 19, 2009, 06:15 PM

:)I guess I was lucky. Did not preorder drove up to a slow AT&T Store in Lynnwood WA :mad: bought a 32gb and they activated while I waited... But my dentist appt following was not so easy... Ouch!!!:mad::)

oncdoc

Jun 19, 2009, 06:16 PM

Why did you swap the sim ?
I just left the sim that came with it. Took less than 2 minutes.

I swapped the sim, because after waiting 2 hours, the new sim still did not activate. I even turned the phone on and off several times, and re-seated the new sim several times as people here have suggested. But it didn't work. As soon as I put in my old sim, the phone activated. Even now, when I put the new sim back in the phone, still no service. So I'm using the old sim and things seem fine so far.

syklee26

Jun 19, 2009, 06:22 PM

i know this is off topic but are you guys having trouble with the Weather App? It is not working on my phone.

zedsdead

Jun 19, 2009, 06:24 PM

i know this is off topic but are you guys having trouble with the Weather App? It is not working on my phone.

Nope. It's dead.

nemaslov

Jun 19, 2009, 06:24 PM

i know this is off topic but are you guys having trouble with the Weather App? It is not working on my phone.

interesting. i just tried it too and nada. San Francisco has no weather!!!??? :confused:

javaGuru

Jun 19, 2009, 06:26 PM

I just got off the phone with AT&T and they went ahead and entered in my IMEI and ICCID numbers from my iPhone box and it now works. :) I'm one happy camper now. LOL.

zkmusa

Jun 19, 2009, 06:29 PM

I was having the same activation issue. However, after swapping out SIM cards with the SIM card in my 4GB iPhone, the iPhone 3GS activated immediately.

dwd3885

Jun 19, 2009, 06:29 PM

Yea I had the whole number swap thing. Called before I activated. She transferred everything correctly and then I plugged my phone into iTunes and got an activation delay. Well, I put in the sim from my old iPhone and it activated instantly. She said that I should use the new sim (everything will work better) but I don't think I need to use the new one.

syklee26

Jun 19, 2009, 06:29 PM

damn it now Stock app is not working either. What da heck is going on?

jrahn

Jun 19, 2009, 06:29 PM

My activation went smoothly, I was the first one at the La Jolla store to walk out activated. It seems that the store was not equipped with enough cords for all the terminals so they were honestly doing the activations one at a time, with the store fully staffed and standing around. All is well here.

nemaslov

Jun 19, 2009, 06:31 PM

damn it now Stock app is not working either. What da heck is going on?

Crap the stocks app hasn't worked since last September!!! :eek:

random person

Jun 19, 2009, 06:33 PM

Got in line in Boston Apple Store this morning at 8am. Got to an actual sales person at 9:45am. Activation took a minute or less -- no issue at all.

MacBoucher

Jun 19, 2009, 06:37 PM

Oh, AT&T. Another nail in the coffin we're preparing for your use on the day your exclusive deal with Apple expires.

WHen will Verizon pick up the iPhone? I still have the original iPhone and I'm waiting for another carrier - AT&T is terrible. Hopefully, the wait will not be too long. Gah! :eek:

Carlos E

Jun 19, 2009, 06:37 PM

WallyBird

Jun 19, 2009, 06:37 PM

Ok I just got in from work, my 3Gs was waiting at my door (aahh the benefits of living in a doorman building).

Hooked it up and it activated instantly, but for the 2 minute delay due to my PC locking up (it does this every few minutes or so because it runs Vista Ultimate Crap).

It is now syncing 2500 songs, I am anxious to give it a spin - my first iPhone! :D

Oh by the way I ported over from TMO and still it activated instantly.

thelordnyax

Jun 19, 2009, 06:39 PM

i bought mine around 7:30 PDT, and at around 8:00 it still hadn't activated, i turned the phone off then back on, and..."iPhone is activated"!

(it does this every few minutes or so because it runs Vista Ultimate Crap).

download Windows 7...it's beautiful

JosephBergdoll

Jun 19, 2009, 06:40 PM

Took me like 2 minutes to activate at around 11:15 AM PST...

Matthew Yohe

Jun 19, 2009, 06:41 PM

Oh, after not swapping the SIM from the iPhone 1st gen, I did restart the phone once. It activated shortly after that.

Fluffy Bunny

Jun 19, 2009, 06:42 PM

The complete shutdown and start up worked like a charm. It took about 30 minutes to do initial setup and sync. Once it was synced I did the restart and it was activated. Thanks for the tip.

NewSc2

Jun 19, 2009, 06:44 PM

After multiple restarts and a swap of SIMs still not working. *shrug* Not like I have to use the phone, wondering if I should just wait it out or will I eventually have to call AT&T...

merrickAICN

Jun 19, 2009, 06:45 PM

The staff of Apple store in Barton Creek Mall here in Austin was rockin'.

I was through the line (where I was handed a free bottle of Ozarka by store employees)...purchased the phone...activated the phone...and back out to my car in roughly 35 minutes.

Part of this is due to pre-ordering, I'm sure...making for less of a deluge than we saw with the release of the 3G. But the staff's efficiency and planning were WAY BEYOND top notch, and I'm sure this helped things run more smoothly than expected to a large degree. They seemed relaxed happy...customers were relaxed and happy...and all was right with the world. Actual activation took about 25 seconds, by the way.

As for the phone? Awesome product. Not enough of a leap forward for die hard #G lovers to get *too* excited about, but it *does* seem faster, the video works out pretty damn well from what I've seen so far, and the 3Gs just feels spunkier/more solid all the way around.

Happy.

bretm

Jun 19, 2009, 06:46 PM

appleluver

Jun 19, 2009, 06:47 PM

i know this is off topic but are you guys having trouble with the Weather App? It is not working on my phone.

Never thought to check but I just did and its not working :mad:

bretm

Jun 19, 2009, 06:48 PM

WHen will Verizon pick up the iPhone? I still have the original iPhone and I'm waiting for another carrier - AT&T is terrible. Hopefully, the wait will not be too long. Gah! :eek:

Another year at least. At first, it was rumored it was a 5 year contract. But it has been more recently revealed it was 3. Expect them to get a lot better this year to keep or extend it.

You really want Verizon? It would cost at least $15/mo more.

benlee

Jun 19, 2009, 06:49 PM

im on the phone with At&t but he doesn't know what he is doing. What do I tell him to do.

Carlos E

Jun 19, 2009, 06:51 PM

im on the phone with At&t but he doesn't know what he is doing. What do I tell him to do.
Tell him to transfer you to someone who knows what they're doing!!!!

WallyBird

Jun 19, 2009, 06:54 PM

Good news all! It appears my apartment is the one location in manhattan with 5 (yes, 5) bars of ATT signal!

The next test will be my office where TMO and ATT have little to no signal. We'll see on Monday!

Mr Maui

Jun 19, 2009, 06:57 PM

matt550

Jun 19, 2009, 06:59 PM

Going on 2 hours. I took out new sim, put in old sim, nothing happened. Put back in new sim and it's activated.

JMax1

Jun 19, 2009, 07:00 PM

Good luck all you 3GSers out there! I hope the problem resolves itself without too much pain. I'll be feeling your pain in one year with the next generation iPhone.

slffl

Jun 19, 2009, 07:03 PM

Turn the phone off. Turn the phone on. Activated.

Wehrwolf

Jun 19, 2009, 07:07 PM

Waited nearly 5 hours for activation & tried reseating SIM/restarting before I finally broke down and called ATT. Hold time was surprisingly short, and to their credit, support was very helpful. Took about 30 minutes overall, but as soon as I hung up, I power cycled the phone and it was activated. All seems to be well so far.

What's up with the Stocks/Weather service? Servers took a dump?

rjohnstone

Jun 19, 2009, 07:08 PM

I disagree with the VZW could not handle the volume. They would set up some sort of temporary network to be ready for it or localize it.
Well since the activations still have to go through Apple's ITMS servers, how is this AT&T's issue?
OPUS does not activate the iPhone, OPUS makes a call to Apple's servers and simply waits for a response.
Every part of my transaction today went smooth as glass until the activation part.
The rep told me OPUS was waiting for a response from Apple to complete the activation.
5 Minutes later it was done.

Moonlight

Jun 19, 2009, 07:13 PM

No delay here, took 10 minutes.

iBeard

Jun 19, 2009, 07:14 PM

Posting from my 3G S right now. It was waiting to activate for like 30 mins so I powered cycled it and when it came back up it said "activated." this was like 20 mins ago btw.

Carlos E

Jun 19, 2009, 07:16 PM

What's up with the Stocks/Weather service? Servers took a dump?

Mine isn't working.

wonderbread57

Jun 19, 2009, 07:22 PM

Why can't you say {email address removed}. "Redacted" seem unnecessary given that there are more familiar synonyms that could be used.

RebootD

Jun 19, 2009, 07:27 PM

Ah AT&T how I loathe you. This is just one reason I can't own an iphone besides not having decent and/or reliable coverage their service is abysmal.

Please Please Please bring the iPhone to Verizon.. heck even TMOBILE! (at least they have coverage here)

Kid Red

Jun 19, 2009, 07:29 PM

No problem activating for me as I post this on my new iPhone 3GS!!!

zulgand04

Jun 19, 2009, 07:34 PM

I just got mine in the mail, activated it and was up and running within 10 minutes. Awsome phone huge upgrade from the original.

-Neal

D0rk

Jun 19, 2009, 07:35 PM

Activation took <2 minutes going from my EDGE iPhone to the 3GS, using the SIM that came with the 3GS. Currently syncing everything.

DaHood

Jun 19, 2009, 07:39 PM

I was having problems as well. After waiting 45 minutes, I called ATT for assistance. While I was on hold waiting for iPhone support, I decided to power down and power up. Problem solved.

sailingkid207

Jun 19, 2009, 07:39 PM

yeaa i was having the same problem i just got mine literly an hour ago and it was taking forever and i called apple and att and they couldn't do anything but then i synced it and it istantly worked this could have just been ironic or try that maby it will work.

djmyogi

Jun 19, 2009, 07:42 PM

I called AT&T. They asked for my IMEI number which can be found

Settings>> General >>About and scroll down.

I then popped in the SIM card from my old iPhone and it was working in minutes.

I hope this helps.

Chad H

Jun 19, 2009, 07:50 PM

I just got denied when I called AT&T. I am on hold with Apple. I want this issue resolved right now. I refuse to wait 48hrs. The AT&T customer service representative told me "Well, your just gonna have to wait 48hrs, we know its an issue". I mean c'mon, this is the third time AT&T has been through this and they haven't gotten it right yet. This clearly is a company that has someone running it that has their head so far up their a$$ they can't see the light of day. Sorry for ranting, but this is insane. If I ran my business like this I would be out of a job/home and on the street.

ec51

Jun 19, 2009, 07:50 PM

MK25toLife

Jun 19, 2009, 07:52 PM

I am on hold right now with "Trinidad" from AT&T Wireless and she said that she has not had anyone call her today about any activation issues, I started laughing, is she really serious? Good part is it only took 5 minutes to get through.

sfditty

Jun 19, 2009, 07:52 PM

Mine was activated in less than a minute, in fact it may have been less than 10 seconds. Strange how this is sporadic. I'm in RI.

WallyBird

Jun 19, 2009, 07:55 PM

how do i get stocks working? all i get is the little circling icon...

Lanbrown

Jun 19, 2009, 07:58 PM

Oh, AT&T. Another nail in the coffin we're preparing for your use on the day your exclusive deal with Apple expires.

Just where do you think Apple will go? T-Mobile? Enjoy their 3G network. If you think Verizon; not going to happen until long after LTE. Since Apple is 2 to 3 years behind the competition; expect an LTE phone is three years or so.

outcast316

Jun 19, 2009, 07:59 PM

7 hours, still not activated. I called and the CSR said there was no way to speed up the process.

emt1

Jun 19, 2009, 08:02 PM

I can't even activate my parent's cheap little Samsung phone because of you guys! :(

HiRez

Jun 19, 2009, 08:03 PM

First of all wait a while, give it an hour or two. But, if your phone still reads "No Service" as mine did, try turning it off and back on again. That's what worked for me (this was an upgrade, not a new sign-up with AT&T).

elliotay

Jun 19, 2009, 08:04 PM

I've called AT&T they were very helpful but it just still wasn't activating. I've reset it. Completely shut it off. Reset the SIM card. Nothing works. Oh well... also it's getting slightly frustrating reading all the posts of everyone saying how their phone was activated in seconds. <----- I want to go to there.

carlosbutler

Jun 19, 2009, 08:07 PM

I can't even activate my parent's cheap little Samsung phone because of you guys! :(

lol that actually made me laugh:p

in the UK it took aaaaages. then i switched if off and then back on again and instantly it connected. you guys and gals might want to try switch it on and of every hour or so if you are real desperate

entity

Jun 19, 2009, 08:08 PM

My phone was delivered around 3PM EST. Got home and unboxed around 6PM. We were on the phone with AT&T all day (at Best Buy) so I expected similar. Sure enough, iTunes is giving the 48 hour resolution. Kinda sucks.

It seems that turning the phone on/off reinitiates the "activation attempt", or at least I think.

I honestly don't expect it to work until the AM hours. We'll see!

carlosbutler

Jun 19, 2009, 08:09 PM

phineas

Jun 19, 2009, 08:12 PM

If any one of you are surprised about having activation problems than your naive. I say this because AT&T has KNOW that 3.0 was going to bring the features users wanted since day 1, and what are they doing, putting it off and than there going to charge an arm and a leg for tethering.

Its Friday night and most of the CSR's are sitting there saying what ever the email they got from there supervisiors sent out to them to tell people that call in that "OUR NETWORK CANNOT HANDLE ALL OF THIS AT ONCE" well that's what it should say.

Goto Howard Forums and read the AT&T posts. Sad to say but they could care less when you get activated, you already paid the money and agreed to a 2 year contract.

I sincerely wish you all the best with your activations :)

Bickity

Jun 19, 2009, 08:16 PM

Got lucky. Took 5 minutes for me.

soLoredd

Jun 19, 2009, 08:17 PM

I'll never understand the need for folks to rush out on release day for this kind of stuff. That's three years straight now there have been issues yet people are still getting caught in it.

I don't know - unless you don't have a phone already, what's a two or three day wait?

Chad H

Jun 19, 2009, 08:20 PM

Rodimus Prime

Jun 19, 2009, 08:22 PM

7 hours, still not activated. I called and the CSR said there was no way to speed up the process.

That is not completely true but they are not going to bend the rules just for you.

They can take your request and bump it to the front of the line. Several years ago when my parents were upgrading my bothers and my phones over to ATT from sprint it was taking a little longer than it should (normal a 2-3 min set up for new customers) and it got busy. They guy at the store called it in and told them what was going on and boom we went to the frount of the line and cut in front of everyone.

Now I would think for something like a mass hit with the iPhones get I would say as ATT set the rule down hard and say sorry no we can not do anything because if they started bumping people they would be slammed with calls about it.

Simple fact is it is not cost effect for ATT to have to prep their systems for the slammed like this for only 1-2 days a year. It cost to much money to have the extra hardware on hand. Renting it still would cost them way to much money because they would have to rent it for quite some time to have enough time to prep the extra servers and work them in and then all the time removing the extra servers. It is not cost effective.

None of the carriers could handle the spike in demand. We are seeing all over the world people having long delays.

point665

Jun 19, 2009, 08:23 PM

My boss and I pre-ordered our iPhone 3GS models on the announcement day and received them this afternoon... I went to activate my and it gave me the "48 hour" notice. He was going to wait to activate his but gave it a try anyways - went through instantly.

I waited and waited, rebooted a few times and then called AT&T. The first person transfered me to Apple... who transfered me back to AT&T. I spoke to two people at AT&T, neither one of them knew anything about iPhones... I kind of assisted them but played a bit dumb (didnt want to tell them howto do their job). Anyways it turns that a new IMEI number had been assigned to my account today... it was the wrong one! The sim card number was also wrong!

They fixed them and my new 3GS was activated :)

I think alot of people will have to call in incase the IMEI/Sim card mismatches are whats causing the activation issues.

psdubya

Jun 19, 2009, 08:23 PM

I connected to iTunes and got the same message.... I then called att and talked to a csr who had me do the following 3 steps which didn't work ;(

1.) Power off phone, take sim out for 30sec, power back on... and... no worky!

2.) Then the csr said they would resend the activation... waiting... waiting ... waiting... and no worky!

3.) Turn off phone, wait 30sec, then power back on... and... no worky!

So anyways... I ended up restoring again through iTunes and it activated immediately. Now it could have been a coincidence but who cares! Good luck!

MrLizardo

Jun 19, 2009, 08:24 PM

Sad to say but they could care less when you get activated, you already paid the money and agreed to a 2 year contract.

I sincerely wish you all the best with your activations :)

Actually, I can bail on ATT and APPLE. It JUST DOESN'T WORK, and it has not since 10 A.M. It is not worth the money, after all it's just a phone, or actually it's just a paperweight. I'm calling now...6..1..1...........

outcast316

Jun 19, 2009, 08:28 PM

That is not completely true but they are not going to bend the rules just for you.

They can take your request and bump it to the front of the line. Several years ago when my parents were upgrading my bothers and my phones over to ATT from sprint it was taking a little longer than it should (normal a 2-3 min set up for new customers) and it got busy. They guy at the store called it in and told them what was going on and boom we went to the frount of the line and cut in front of everyone.

Now I would think for something like a mass hit with the iPhones get I would say as ATT set the rule down hard and say sorry no we can not do anything because if they started bumping people they would be slammed with calls about it.

Simple fact is it is not cost effect for ATT to have to prep their systems for the slammed like this for only 1-2 days a year. It cost to much money to have the extra hardware on hand. Renting it still would cost them way to much money because they would have to rent it for quite some time to have enough time to prep the extra servers and work them in and then all the time removing the extra servers. It is not cost effective.

None of the carriers could handle the spike in demand. We are seeing all over the world people having long delays.

I was not asking them to bend the rules just for me..I was only hoping to expedite the process.

KaiMac

Jun 19, 2009, 08:28 PM

The whole process today took less than 45 minutes to drive to a store, wait in line, get a new iPhone, and activate it right there in the store and start texting. I don't get it. No issues for me at all, last year 3G was a debacle.

notoaststereo

Jun 19, 2009, 08:29 PM

mine was activated very quickly, but after about 8 hours of hacing it all my service just went away.

bbrosemer

Jun 19, 2009, 08:33 PM

Anyone with an OLD iPhone 3G - should just use their OLD SIM.

The whole activation process has nothing to do with the actual phone. It's all about the SIM card. I just popped in my old sim and bypassed the whole activation crap. Bam - working within two minutes.

Um no ... your 100% wrong ... if you pre-ordered from apple the devices serial gets paired with the phone # ... AKA I have the old 3g and the new 3gs swapping sims does nothing yet the old one works fine with the old sim in it ... This was found out as apple switched me and another guys phone so i texted him and yep that was the case we are both experiencing this problem even with an attempted sim switch for both of us it won't work... When I plug the phone into itunes with any sim in it it registers his # ... that is how I know / assume yes I know ... that the serial is paired with the phone #...

Frisco

Jun 19, 2009, 08:36 PM

NewSc2

Jun 19, 2009, 08:44 PM

Took about an hour for me, but didn't do much other than restart the phone like 10 times. The last time it said "Activated".

diabolic

Jun 19, 2009, 08:45 PM

That is not completely true but they are not going to bend the rules just for you.

They can take your request and bump it to the front of the line.

That must be what they did for me then. I had waited about 3 hours for activation, then called AT&T. I was extremely nice and said I was hoping I could get them to push out my activation so I wouldn't be without a phone for 48 hours. She took my SIM number and activated it right then. After a power cycle, the phone was activated.

They are definitely allowed to manually activate it immediately. I wonder if the people being told they can't speed it up start off demanding things instead of politely asking.

topology

Jun 19, 2009, 08:54 PM

It has been 11 hours and my 3GS is still NOT activated!

Then I insert my old SIM from 1st gen iphone, it works. So I think I will continue to use the old SIM with the new 3GS until ATT stop it (Hopefully it means the new SIM is ready!!).

Xibalba

Jun 19, 2009, 08:54 PM

Yes, because Verizon would somehow magically be able to handle the activation process better than AT&T can...

I doubt any other carrier has ever had to handle as many activations in one day as AT&T does with the iPhone.

exactly, the volume on sales day for each iphone has been tremendous and makes other carriers fearful of the day that phone reaches them...

Chad H

Jun 19, 2009, 08:57 PM

Maui

Jun 19, 2009, 09:00 PM

I just went through line and activated my new iPhone is less than 45 minutes total. There were no activation issues at the McArthur store. Is this a real story?

No, it's a fake story. The hundred or so who have posted about having the exact activation problems described in the story are all just making it up.

roxysdad

Jun 19, 2009, 09:01 PM

This might turn into a big problem, but it is working now...

I ordered the new phone using my wife's number, upgrade option. My plan was to just switch SIM cards when it got here. It wouldn't activate using the new SIM, so I plugged in her old SIM and it activated. Then I put her SIM back into her 3G, and I used my old SIM from my original iPhone in the new 3GS and it worked.

It will be interesting to see if this all catches up with me and neither phone works tomorrow!

chris

sam10685

Jun 19, 2009, 09:04 PM

Update:

Popping out the SIM and reinsterting didn't do anything for me. Still waiting for activation.

Any other tricks?

Yes. Smash your new phone on a rock. Your old one was fine.

michelle21

Jun 19, 2009, 09:04 PM

not bragging.. but...

This was the best upgrade experience yet...

I had thought about preordering... but I remembered with the first version of the iphone Apple delayed some online shipments including mine so as to have more phones for the retail stores.

I didn't go to an att store because I figured they would get a limited number of phones.

So I pre-reserverd on the apple site, went to my apple retail store at 5:45 am, There were about 6 people ahead of me. The folks in the biue and orange shirts seemed really excited .. you might say giddy. They actually let us in the store about 6:45.

Even though I was adding a line to my account to get the subsidized price, the whole process took about 10 min, but did not convert me to the family talk plan like I requested.

Went home, Kind of went back to sleep for awhile, say noon. apple store is like an hour away so I was a bit tired.

Synched the new phone, restoring from the 3g backup, added my developer provisioning certificates and called ATT.

I acutally got through fast, And the support person was really really good, explaned the family talk plan, switched my account, swapped phone numbers even changed the caller-id info as I requested. Finally I swapped the sims and I was done.

geoffry.curtis

Jun 19, 2009, 09:08 PM

ryanvalle

Jun 19, 2009, 09:08 PM

Still waiting on activating. Has been about 30 minutes. I know many more have waited much longer than that, so im not panicking yet...

I just hope that this newly activated line would also get an automatically updated MMS setting. That'd be cool. i don't see why they can't set it so that new iPhone lines can be switched over to be able to make use of MMS.

KinOfCain

Jun 19, 2009, 09:09 PM

short story: swapping sim worked (but no 3g yet)

long story: Got mine this morning, spent all day toggling airplane mode and rebooting, no luck. Called ATT, they tried a bunch of things, but couldn't get passed the fact that their system kept saying I hadn't accepted the TOS, even after I went through them on the phone with the rep.

Just swapped my old sim in, activated in about 20 seconds and works fine. Out of curiosity I swapped the new sim back in and it does not work. My old sim says "3G" on it, even though it was from a 2G iPhone, but I haven't gotten a 3G signal yet. Not sure if it's due to the fact I don't have a good signal, or if my SIM is only set up for 2G.

ec51

Jun 19, 2009, 09:18 PM

Um no ... your 100% wrong ... if you pre-ordered from apple the devices serial gets paired with the phone # ... AKA I have the old 3g and the new 3gs swapping sims does nothing yet the old one works fine with the old sim in it ... This was found out as apple switched me and another guys phone so i texted him and yep that was the case we are both experiencing this problem even with an attempted sim switch for both of us it won't work... When I plug the phone into itunes with any sim in it it registers his # ... that is how I know / assume yes I know ... that the serial is paired with the phone #...

Umm no YOUR 100% wrong.

How do I know? I have a 100% working iPhone 3G S. For your information, my the phone's SERIAL number is different than the SIM ID #. So if my phone number is registered to my phone's serial, why would changing the SIM matter? My serial is that of my brand new 3S and it is paid with my existing and current phone number. The SIM ID is entirely separate.

You my friend, are wrong. Thank you.

Oh - and PS: I still had to connect to iTunes. But it did not activate the same way as all of you are doing.

iliketomac

Jun 19, 2009, 09:21 PM

Figures... AT&T cannot step-up and go above & beyond for its customers. :mad:

GreasyKeane

Jun 19, 2009, 09:26 PM

I upgraded one line from the 16GB 3G to the 32GB 3G S and activated a new line with a second 32GB (For the wife... it's the only way she'd let me buy myself one) and both of ours activated within an hour of the purchase. One thing that I did though was turned them both off and then back on and they immediately activated after that. I think that the power cycling really helped.

MrLizardo

Jun 19, 2009, 09:26 PM

To all those whining just take a step back and think of all the children around the world that have nothing to eat tonight and are starving to death.

I don't mean to be dramatic, but please take a step back and reflect. At the end of the day this is just one very minor inconvenience in a world of hate and pain.

Relax.

Frisco is right! I had one that just sat there and said "No Service" for 10 hours, I thought about what Frisco said. It made sense. So I called Apple, told them It Just Didn't Work, and now have an RMA, a prepaid return label, and forgiveness for the 10% restock fee (because it was their problem).

I will take a portion of the money that would otherwise pile up with Apple's billions and see about helping some of those who are really suffering, like the poor people in Iran tonight.

Thanks, Frisco!

tdhurst

Jun 19, 2009, 09:32 PM

Mine activated in about ten minutes this afternoon in Chicago, but I have no Edge, 3G or Visual Voicemail coverage.

Calls in and out just fine.

Anyone experiencing something similar?

Reera

Jun 19, 2009, 09:34 PM

Mine took about an hour, a little window popped up that said "iPhone is activated."

coachgq

Jun 19, 2009, 09:34 PM

So I just got back from the Danbury Fair mall - I wasn't going to buy a 3GS, but was going to pick up a MBP 17"... Won't even let people in the store.

Mind you, there are 7 people in line OUTSIDE THE STORE, while there are 7 TOTAL people in the store (which for this store is basically EMPTY.

I asked why, at 8 p.m. they would keep non-phone customers out of the store while 7 people at a time got hooked up with their phones. No answer.

Ridiculous that apple would sacrifice a whole day of revenue from ALL the other stuff they sell - did this happen in any other stores?

Yes, happened to me too. I needed to get something looked at on my $2K MBP, and tried to schedule an appt with "genius" bar. Couldn't do it online so I thought I would stop by to see why not...I mean why would a new phone buyer be needing help with it already? They wouldn't let me in. Ridiculous that they would drop their "wonderful" customer service approach to sell some phones. I was very disappointed to say the least.

isoMorpheus

Jun 19, 2009, 09:35 PM

Just restart the iPhone repeatedly, it should speed up the process.:apple:

cgray24

Jun 19, 2009, 09:36 PM

I gave up on waiting for activation. I switched my SIM card from my 1st Gen iPhone into the 3Gs and bingo worked like a charm. So far so good. Great 3G service, the works.

Just hope there isnt any side effects later.

iphonetester

Jun 19, 2009, 09:38 PM

Man, activation was painful! Now I am up and running. Took about 3 hours for att to show up

edoates

Jun 19, 2009, 09:38 PM

Just restart the iPhone repeatedly, it should speed up the process.:apple:

Confirmed: apparently starting a new network search bumps ATT's activation servers into action faster. If your iPhone is just sitting there with "No Service," I think you just go into a queue.

Klrbee25

Jun 19, 2009, 09:44 PM

I was waiting for the phone to activate for about an hour. Finally, I just turned the phone off and then back on. After searching for about 20 seconds, I was activated and had full service. Coincidence?...or perhaps you just have to power cycle it and force it to search for a signal again.

ryanvalle

Jun 19, 2009, 09:51 PM

im activated. Activation came about after an hour of waiting and after a phone restore from a backup of my old phone...

iSee

Jun 19, 2009, 09:52 PM

So I just got back from the Danbury Fair mall - I wasn't going to buy a 3GS, but was going to pick up a MBP 17"... Won't even let people in the store.

Mind you, there are 7 people in line OUTSIDE THE STORE, while there are 7 TOTAL people in the store (which for this store is basically EMPTY.

I asked why, at 8 p.m. they would keep non-phone customers out of the store while 7 people at a time got hooked up with their phones. No answer.

Ridiculous that apple would sacrifice a whole day of revenue from ALL the other stuff they sell - did this happen in any other stores?

Sorry... I got back from there a little while ago. I was there around 8 with my wife getting my new iPhone. I was one of those people getting a phone that were keeping you out. I don't think they did that all day though. It seemed like they were starting to guard the door when I was leaving. (could be wrong)

Fraghax

Jun 19, 2009, 09:54 PM

So I just got back from the Danbury Fair mall - I wasn't going to buy a 3GS, but was going to pick up a MBP 17"... Won't even let people in the store.

Mind you, there are 7 people in line OUTSIDE THE STORE, while there are 7 TOTAL people in the store (which for this store is basically EMPTY.

I asked why, at 8 p.m. they would keep non-phone customers out of the store while 7 people at a time got hooked up with their phones. No answer.

Ridiculous that apple would sacrifice a whole day of revenue from ALL the other stuff they sell - did this happen in any other stores?

It happened to me too! I was just going to check out the Macbook accessories and they wouldnt let me in. It was frustrating! :mad: They even had security standing outside the store......

astrobanana

Jun 19, 2009, 09:56 PM

mine occured in less then 3 mins, what is taking so long for you guys?
you must construct additional pylons/servers

Fraghax

Jun 19, 2009, 09:57 PM

Duff-Man

Jun 19, 2009, 09:59 PM

Duff-Man says...restarting the phones got both the ones we bought today activated...oh yeah!

mneblett

Jun 19, 2009, 10:02 PM

I must be one of the lucky ones -- upgrading from a 16GB 3G to a 32GB 3GS, and the process was totally smooth and quick. No activation issues - didn't even need to restart the 3GS. While I was still on the line with ATT's automated telephone activation system, the "phone activated" message appears on the 3GS's screen. Completely painless.

lilnyc

Jun 19, 2009, 10:02 PM

Like some others, I swapped my 3G sim card with my 3GS sim, and it actvated immediately.

I did this before with the original iPhone when activating the 3G, and it worked too.

Like someone mentioned, I believe this issue is for those activating it without a 3G sim to swap.

patrick49

Jun 19, 2009, 10:02 PM

I started trying to activate mine around 5:30 Central. Got the "this may take a while" message, figured it'd be done in a lil bit. Took it to the ATT store after 3 hrs of no-go and after multiple SIM card pulls/reinserts, power cycles, etc. The sales rep pulls up my account and...the 3GS is nowhere to be seen, it still had my old first gen iPhone on it even though I had already blanked that one back to factory. Maybe I screwed up and didn't do something, but it took him literally three seconds to activate it and I was out the door.

As someone else mentioned a few pages back, this was at the ATT store at Barton Creek Mall in Austin, TX and the staff there was supremely patient and helpful, even with a bunch of screaming kids running around and confused older folks. Props to them.

Fluffy Bunny

Jun 19, 2009, 10:04 PM

Figures... AT&T cannot step-up and go above & beyond for its customers. :mad:

Um, 99% of these problems are user error. People post "damn activation doesn't work!!!", then 20 minutes later "uh, I shut phone down and then turned it back on and it was activated." That is not only an AT&T issue.

Sure activations may be a little slower today, but what is a cellular carrier to do? Build out their systems to handle the average daily activations of 50k phone over 364 days or the 500k activations in one day? If activation time is your biggest problem, then wait a day or two to buy the phone.

America is the country of whiners.

jimsowden

Jun 19, 2009, 10:06 PM

Went into my local At&t store today to pick up a few iphones. I got 3 of the 4 models, all were in stock at 10am but very low in the black models. Got mine sold and running (3g upgrade, no reserve or anything) in about 10 minutes flat.

Then got 2 more on a business account. This took much longer, as it was 11:30 and the west cost went online. Didn't get out until about 12:15, but all in all I'd say not to shabby. The very nice rep at the store activated 2 of the 3, leaving the third wrapped for a present. I got it back and activated right away without so much as a second delay.

On my end, not too shabby.

SeanGolf

Jun 19, 2009, 10:07 PM

I too had the magical words... "Waiting for Activation... This may take a while." appear on my screen. What?! I ordered this phone the day Apple made it available!!

I called Apple and the kid I spoke with was really no help at all. He advised me to wait it out. I am not that patient, so I called AT&T and spoke with a rep over there.

She did some things on her end, but the only thing that finally got it to work after she provisioned the lines was for me to perform a reset on the phone. It came up and activated!!

Maybe some service reps are more helpful than others. :confused:

vansouza

Jun 19, 2009, 10:07 PM

Um, 99% of these problems are user error. People post "damn activation doesn't work!!!", then 20 minutes later "uh, I shut phone down and then turned it back on and it was activated." That is not only an AT&T issue.

Sure activations may be a little slower today, but what is a cellular carrier to do? Build out their systems to handle the average daily activations of 50k phone over 364 days or the 500k activations in one day? If activation time is your biggest problem, then wait a day or two to buy the phone.

America is the country of whiners.

You could have just kept your politics to yourself.

cgray24

Jun 19, 2009, 10:15 PM

Wait! your getting "great" 3G service?!! when did AT&T start doing this?!!!;)

LOL..

well thats all relative. To me, coming from Edge... its great.

CADer

Jun 19, 2009, 10:16 PM

seemed like my activation was hanging.......then I ejected the SIM card with the little tool in the packaging and replaced it and the phone activated immediately - worth a try - TC

WOW I must give you props!! I read the whole 48 hours thing and my wife got pissed and then I saw your post and tried it and BOOM! Activated like that! Thanks so much you saved me from sitting around for 42 hours!!

emilygrae

Jun 19, 2009, 10:18 PM

Okay, after being patient I restarted my iPhone. Didn't work. Waited another hour. Restarted again and it came up saying it was activated. I don't think it's the restart that magically activates the phone. I think that it's getting activated but the iphone isn't checking to SEE if it's activated until it's forced to by a restart or a sim re-insert. I dunno though, just a thought. :apple:

jeffmo

Jun 19, 2009, 10:28 PM

no problems over here.. activated mine around 11ish.. was on the line with att rep to change my number cuz they assigned me the wrong area code.. very quick, painless and friendly.. overall the best customer service i've ever received from a mobile carrier

iPhone 3GS one of the best purchases i've ever made.. this mobile OS has really sold me and i'm seriously considering converting all of my computer systems to apple in the future.. i've been a pc head my whole life, but maybe i've been shown the light now.. next up mac book pro and then an imac! =)

Michael73

Jun 19, 2009, 10:34 PM

I activated mine this morning at BB and the whole process took about an hour but otherwise went smoothly. The sale associate said usually it takes about half that time. The credit check and unbricking part took the longest.

mrrydogg

Jun 19, 2009, 10:35 PM

If your phone is just hanging up and says "Searching" try restarting it.

I know of several people who waited over 1/2 hr, then did this. When the phone restarted it displayed a message that said "iPhone is activated".

Its worth a try, I think some phones are just timing out or something.

marc.wilcox

Jun 19, 2009, 10:39 PM

After waiting 2 hours, I tried this and it worked instantly. Thanks!!

seemed like my activation was hanging.......then I ejected the SIM card with the little tool in the packaging and replaced it and the phone activated immediately - worth a try - TC

mski349

Jun 19, 2009, 10:45 PM

Anyone else having a hard time using the autofill?

Wyvernspirit

Jun 19, 2009, 10:46 PM

I think mine took about four hours to activate.

Fully activated now.

Yay!

taphil

Jun 19, 2009, 10:47 PM

After waiting 2 hours, I tried this and it worked instantly. Thanks!!
Worked instantly for me too!

Baja2k

Jun 19, 2009, 10:47 PM

I ordered mine from AT&T as an upgrade to an existing Gen 1 I phone for home delivery via Fed EX. Should just plug and play....Right?

Anyway, I was suffering from the same activation woes that seemed to plague many on these forums. I called AT&T and Apple and both told me I just needed to be patient. Nothing I did worked, Sim Reset, Air plane mode, off and on... Nothing. After many hours of trying to be patient I finally decided to visit a local AT&T store. I took the entire contents of the package as delivered up to the store and spoke with a very helpful AT&T associate (I know that sounds like an Oxymoron but in my case it was true). As she was trying to help me trouble shoot she started to discuss replacing the SIM and then discovered I was still configured in the system on the old Edge network. Then it dawned on her. She asked if I had activated the phone SIM by going to the AT&T activation site that was sent with my phone? Ahh yeah you have everything that was delivered with my phone... please show me where it told me I needed to go to an AT&T Web site. Anyway with a few clicks on a web site that I apparently had access to do from the comfort of my house I was up and running. I was like, It would have been real nice if the phone support people could have informed me of their own upgrade web site. It was never going to work until I hit that site.

Anyway, I walked out of there a lot happier and I also picked up another 3GS phone for my wife while I was at it..... Hey maybe that was their plan all along to get me back in the store!!! Oh now I feel used. lol

(Sorry - Activated the phone SIM should probably read: Upgraded the Phone SIM. The site was specifically for upgrading from 1 SIM to the New one on a current AT&T phone line. I think that may be why a lot of folks were able to just activate by switching to their old SIM from an Iphone 3G. I don't think the same switch out would work with a Gen 1 Phone Edge SIM card.)

redvolvodavid

Jun 19, 2009, 10:55 PM

Well, after about 3 hours of checking every so often between breaks at work, I finally read the instruction book that came with the phone...

At first, I plugged the phone up to my mac and got everything syncing over, but no activation. I removed the sim and put it back in-no go. Got a message saying it may take a bit... Even called ATT/Apple support and the guy said the servers were getting hung up with so many activations.

Well, read the little book saying to call ATT or go online to activate. I called, punched in my numbers, it said to turn off for 5 minutes then turn back on...I did this and it worked within seconds...

I'm like many of us-ready to get the darn thing going with excitement running through me, but taking time to read the included booklet (it was on the front page) worked like a charm! If you guys haven't done so, try it!

MrMoore

Jun 19, 2009, 10:59 PM

Activated! :D

I was upgrading form a 2G to the 3GS. Took about five minutes for the Phone Activated message to appear. Bought the phone from Apple and completed the activation in iTunes. No problem. Was worried at first, but I did a couple of things and when I got back it was working.

Took awhile to restore from the backup and add restore my media, but been working great so far.

patrick49

Jun 19, 2009, 11:00 PM

Sounds like what I had going on. There was a little instruction book that came packaged with the phone that directs to a website, but for some reason that website wouldn't recognize my account/phone as in need of an upgrade. Shrug. All that matters is in the end it worked itself out.

I ordered mine from AT&T as an upgrade to an existing Gen 1 I phone for home delivery via Fed EX. Should just plug and play....Right?

Anyway, I was suffering from the same activation woes that seemed to plague many on these forums. I called AT&T and Apple and both told me I just needed to be patient. Nothing I did worked, Sim Reset, Air plane mode, off and on... Nothing. After many hours of trying to be patient I finally decided to visit a local AT&T store. I took the entire contents of the package as delivered up to the store and spoke with a very helpful AT&T associate (I know that sounds like an Oxymoron but in my case it was true). As she was trying to help me trouble shoot she started to discuss replacing the SIM and then discovered I was still configured in the system on the old Edge network. Then it dawned on her. She asked if I had activated the phone SIM by going to the AT&T activation site that was sent with my phone? Ahh yeah you have everything that was delivered with my phone... please show me where it told me I needed to go to an AT&T Web site. Anyway with a few clicks on a web site that I apparently had access to do from the comfort of my house I was up and running. I was like, It would have been real nice if the phone support people could have informed me of their own upgrade web site. It was never going to work until I hit that site.

Anyway, I walked out of there a lot happier and I also picked up another 3GS phone for my wife while I was at it..... Hey maybe that was their plan all along to get me back in the store!!! Oh now I feel used. lol

(Sorry - Activated the phone SIM should probably read: Upgraded the Phone SIM. The site was specifically for upgrading from 1 SIM to the New one on a current AT&T phone line. I think that may be why a lot of folks were able to just activate by switching to their old SIM from an Iphone 3G. I don't think the same switch out would work with a Gen 1 Phone Edge SIM card.)

Rodimus Prime

Jun 19, 2009, 11:06 PM

By the looks of this part of the iPhone problem is Apple fault. ATT is getting slammed by activating both old and new people. Most of the time when you get a new phone all they do is a sim swap and they are done. Apple should make that possible it would reduce the numbers they have to deal with to just a small fraction.

In the end I blame apple for not following the sim design of ATT standard phones.

bbrosemer

Jun 19, 2009, 11:07 PM

Umm no YOUR 100% wrong.

How do I know? I have a 100% working iPhone 3G S. For your information, my the phone's SERIAL number is different than the SIM ID #. So if my phone number is registered to my phone's serial, why would changing the SIM matter? My serial is that of my brand new 3S and it is paid with my existing and current phone number. The SIM ID is entirely separate.

You my friend, are wrong. Thank you.

Oh - and PS: I still had to connect to iTunes. But it did not activate the same way as all of you are doing.

Ok ... umm no ... what i said is the serial # is attached to the phone # ... not the sim ... the sim is independent ... Yeah I know the sim doesn't matter as when I bought by first 3g contract free... This one though I bought with a contract and apple apparently sends the phone serial # attached to a phone # ... NOT SIM ... serial # attached to phone # ... Is what I said therefore if you have a phone come to you that does not have your number and apparently is pre something or anothered by apple then it will not work ... No matter what sim ...