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Facetime Requires a Message Plan to Work?!?!?!

Blorzoga

Blorzoga

macrumors 68030
Original poster
May 21, 2010
2,560
66
As I was having my iphone 4 activated, the "genius" informed me that Facetime will not work unless you have a message plan with AT&T. Funny how those "free" Facetime chats now cost $5 per month. Again, AT&T and Apple do a bait and switch. Or did they assume everyone had a message plan. I didn't and I still don't. Text messaging is the biggest scam these wireless companies have going. I can send an email with attachments, photos, videos, War & Peace if I want to and it doesn't cost me a nickel. Sent a two letter text message and it will cost me $0.20. If I really want to send a text, there are dozens of free text apps out there. Apparently, when you initiate a facetime call, it sends a text message to the recipient which doesn't count as a text message. So why the hell do you need a plan? Charge me $.20, not $5.00 per month. Blatant false advertising!!!!!
 
Sorry but who ever told you that is sorely mistaken. Initiating a face time call requires wifi which a. you either have in your home or b. readily available to you. Initiating a call via face time button in the contact list or during a telephone call will start the voip connection. There is nothing involving a text message. So no message charges are involved.
 
Actually, Face Time doesn't require your phone to have an active cell connection at all, not even for connecting the call. Of course for now you do need a cell plan on the devices so that they have a phone number associated with them, but again it doesn't need to be connected to make a call. Here's how:

You can put your phone in Airplane mode but with WiFi on so that there is no active cell connection. Then you just need to place a facetime:// url in a web page or email message that you can click on to initiate the call.

EDIT: It might also work by using the Facetime button in the contact list...but I have not tried it.
 
Hold on a second, let me call someone that can help you.

wambulance_logo.jpg
 
Blorzoga said:
As I was having my iphone 4 activated, the "genius" informed me that Facetime will not work unless you have a message plan with AT&T. Funny how those "free" Facetime chats now cost $5 per month. Again, AT&T and Apple do a bait and switch. Or did they assume everyone had a message plan. I didn't and I still don't. Text messaging is the biggest scam these wireless companies have going. I can send an email with attachments, photos, videos, War & Peace if I want to and it doesn't cost me a nickel. Sent a two letter text message and it will cost me $0.20. If I really want to send a text, there are dozens of free text apps out there. Apparently, when you initiate a facetime call, it sends a text message to the recipient which doesn't count as a text message. So why the hell do you need a plan? Charge me $.20, not $5.00 per month. Blatant false advertising!!!!!
Click to expand...

That genius was wrong. I wanted to see if it needed anything from AT&T to connect a FaceTime call so I put my phone in Airplane mode and turned wifi on. It worked. So you do not need anything from AT&T to use FaceTime wifi is all you need.
 
Well I hope you all are correct about not needing a text plan. I didn't sign up for one I was just repeating what the genius told me. I haunt tried o FaceTime anyone because I don't know any one with a ip4. I'm surprised the guy would just make ***** up.
 
I can attest to this as well. My dad received his iPhone yesterday and today we decided to try Facetime out. When he tried turning it on, it just kept saying activating but never fully turned on.

He stopped by AT&T and they explained that he needed a text plan (he never had one before) so he just purchased the $5/month plan.

After setting the plan up, he tried again, and voila, it works.

First I had heard of that until I saw this post.
 
It is possible that it needs to send some data over a (hidden) text message to assist in switching the call from standard cellular voice to internet-based FaceTime.

It doesn't do this if you just initiate call using FaceTime to begin with.

Someone else in another thread clarified that you do not need to have an actual text messaging plan, you just need text messaging enabled. The person previously had text messaging disabled/blocked completely and couldn't use FaceTime, but now he has enabled them and it works. I guess technically you could call this the pay-per-text plan that is like 20 cents per text, but you don't have to pay for whatever Face Time does with it.
 
Moyank24 said:
I can attest to this as well. My dad received his iPhone yesterday and today we decided to try Facetime out. When he tried turning it on, it just kept saying activating but never fully turned on.

He stopped by AT&T and they explained that he needed a text plan (he never had one before) so he just purchased the $5/month plan.

After setting the plan up, he tried again, and voila, it works.

First I had heard of that until I saw this post.
Click to expand...

Someone just tricked your dad into giving them commission.

If it needed text messaging, there would be a disclaimer at the bottom of the Facetime page *text messaging charges may apply*

Call up AT&T and complain and get the charge removed.
 
Hey guys, I tried 1-888-FaceTime today and the rep told me I needed texting enabled. My text was previously restricted, and so the rep told me to call AT&T and get it enabled just for a little. He said in order to enable FaceTime, I had to turn on FaceTime in the settings, which would in turn send a text message to Apple, and then I could restrict text again after that.

After I switched the button to on, it said "Waiting for activation," so I assumed it was trying to send a text and wasn't receiving a reply back or something like that. I enabled text and rebooted my phone, it no longer said it was waiting and FaceTime then worked. I called back AT&T and restricted my text again and it was fine.. though I haven't tried FaceTime since then.

I hope this clears things up!
 
jhuang said:
Hey guys, I tried 1-888-FaceTime today and the rep told me I needed texting enabled. My text was previously restricted, and so the rep told me to call AT&T and get it enabled just for a little. He said in order to enable FaceTime, I had to turn on FaceTime in the settings, which would in turn send a text message to Apple, and then I could restrict text again after that.

After I switched the button to on, it said "Waiting for activation," so I assumed it was trying to send a text and wasn't receiving a reply back or something like that. I enabled text and rebooted my phone, it no longer said it was waiting and FaceTime then worked. I called back AT&T and restricted my text again and it was fine.. though I haven't tried FaceTime since then.

I hope this clears things up!
Click to expand...


How long did you wait for face time to be activated? Just enabled texting and waiting for activation. It's been about 10 minutes...
 
wingnut8 said:
4k.

Get some.
Click to expand...

last month i had almost 10k.

I'm not gonna tell you to suck it or anything though because i know, it's just sad :(

EDIT: @daftdrunk i know you must be lying. i cant imagine texting any more than i do or i would literally be on my phone non-stop, always typing a message on it. :D lol
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8A293 Safari/6531.22.7)

Love how people don't do their homework and overreact.
 
I looked at my text messages for some periods where I made facetime calls, and I did not have any marked as sent or received from the people I called. I'm guessing it is one of those "hidden" SMSes like the ones that trigger voicemail alerts.

dhjapple89 said:
That genius was wrong. I wanted to see if it needed anything from AT&T to connect a FaceTime call so I put my phone in Airplane mode and turned wifi on. It worked. So you do not need anything from AT&T to use FaceTime wifi is all you need.
Click to expand...

I wanted to test this out by taking it a step further. I popped out my sim and was on wifi only. I could neither make or receive a facetime call. As soon as I popped my sim back in, I could then call out.
 
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