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FaceTime stuck on "Waiting for Activation"

T

tomrinny

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 7, 2007
43
0
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_6 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8E200 Safari/6533.18.5)

Hello,
I cannot get FaceTime to work on my new Verizon iPhone. I have tried restoring through iTunes, restore on phone, resetting network settings, resetting all settings, and turning the feature on and off but it's stuck on waiting for activation. Called apple who said it might be Verizon problem. Called verizon who said it was apples problem. Any ideas?
 
T

tomrinny

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 7, 2007
43
0
Is it possible I have a defective phone? After 9 hours of it trying it now says activation unsuccessful. Turn on to try again.
 
Last edited:
D

Dandrews524

macrumors 6502
Jan 30, 2009
483
1
New York
when the iphone was exclusive to AT&T they sent me a piece of **** iphone with a defective speaker. if youre going to point a finger point it at apple, not verizon
 
saberahul

saberahul

macrumors 68040
Nov 6, 2008
3,645
111
USA
Just tried it and it works for me. It's a problem with your iPhone probably. It's most likely a glitch. You should see a Genius.
 
D

DoctorK4

macrumors regular
Jan 31, 2011
142
3
Spent about 30 minutes w/ Verizon tech support last night, and 30 mins w/ Apple this morning. Apparently it's very common w/ former Alltel subscribers. That's not me though - I did an ESN swap. I was able to face time before the ESN swap, but after the swap I get the "waiting for activation." Things I tried, both on my own and at Apple Tech Support's prompting (all of which were unsuccessful for me, but might work for someone else):
- reset network settings (numerous times)
- reset all settings (numerous times)
- turn facetime on and off and back on again
- turn facetime off, power phone down, then back on again, then turn facetime on again
- hard reset
- make sure I could send and receive both SMS and MMS

The Apple guy then put me on hold and worked w/ Verizon to ensure that my text messaging was set up correctly (it was). Then he asked her to remove text messaging from my account and then re-provision it. Still didn't work.

So, the Apple guy has escalated it to the FaceTime engineers to find out if they are receiving the SMS Activation Request from my phone (they should be) and if so, why their servers are not send back an "OK to Activate" message. May just need to be reset or something.

He hopes to have an answer and get back to me today. I will post back here when I hear back.

My guess is that the FaceTime servers are getting the SMS from my phone and denying activation because they "think" my phone should be assigned to a different number. We'll see...
 
J

james92se

macrumors 6502a
Jun 21, 2010
818
27
Dallas, TX
How long does it stay stuck on activating?

The last FaceTime call I made it took forever to go through. Like, maybe a solid 2 minutes. I didn't think it was going to work but it eventually went through and worked just fine. But then again I was driving (and letting my passenger use/see FaceTime for the first time) so maybe I had a weak 3G signal as the culprit. Every other time I've used FaceTime it went through pretty quickly.
 
T

tomrinny

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 7, 2007
43
0
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_6 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8E200 Safari/6533.18.5)

DoctorK4 said:
Spent about 30 minutes w/ Verizon tech support last night, and 30 mins w/ Apple this morning. Apparently it's very common w/ former Alltel subscribers. That's not me though - I did an ESN swap. I was able to face time before the ESN swap, but after the swap I get the "waiting for activation." Things I tried, both on my own and at Apple Tech Support's prompting (all of which were unsuccessful for me, but might work for someone else):
- reset network settings (numerous times)
- reset all settings (numerous times)
- turn facetime on and off and back on again
- turn facetime off, power phone down, then back on again, then turn facetime on again
- hard reset
- make sure I could send and receive both SMS and MMS

The Apple guy then put me on hold and worked w/ Verizon to ensure that my text messaging was set up correctly (it was). Then he asked her to remove text messaging from my account and then re-provision it. Still didn't work.

So, the Apple guy has escalated it to the FaceTime engineers to find out if they are receiving the SMS Activation Request from my phone (they should be) and if so, why their servers are not send back an "OK to Activate" message. May just need to be reset or something.

He hopes to have an answer and get back to me today. I will post back here when I hear back.

My guess is that the FaceTime servers are getting the SMS from my phone and denying activation because they "think" my phone should be assigned to a different number. We'll see...
Click to expand...

I just got off the phone with apple who did the same thing. ( escalate up to the engineers) pretty much the same story as you. I am not a former Altell customer either. Did your activation go smoothly? Mine wouldn't activate through iTunes and Verizon had to have me give them the meid because they had no record of it. Then they had me do *228 to activate.
 
D

DoctorK4

macrumors regular
Jan 31, 2011
142
3
tomrinny said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_6 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8E200 Safari/6533.18.5)



I just got off the phone with apple who did the same thing. ( escalate up to the engineers) pretty much the same story as you. I am not a former Altell customer either. Did your activation go smoothly? Mine wouldn't activate through iTunes and Verizon had to have me give them the meid because they had no record of it. Then they had me do *228 to activate.
Click to expand...
I'm still waiting for a call back after the Face Time engineers take a look at it.

Are you saying the FaceTime engineers already resolved it for you? And then *228 then 1 to reactivate your phone got your FaceTime working again?
 
T

tomrinny

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 7, 2007
43
0
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_6 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8E200 Safari/6533.18.5)

No no sorry. I'm still waiting for them to get back to me also. I was talking about the initial phone activation. I was just wondering if that maybe affected it.
 
D

DoctorK4

macrumors regular
Jan 31, 2011
142
3
I see - sorry I misunderstood. You might be onto something there. I ordered from apple.com, and I did have trouble activating. I had to call Verizon and they had to change some settings on their end before I was able to *228 to do my initial activation.

However, after that initial activation, I was able to FaceTime successfully. It was only after an ESN swap (which was implemented with a *228 to activate under the new numberr) that I was no longer able to FaceTime.
 
D

DoctorK4

macrumors regular
Jan 31, 2011
142
3
I just heard back. The FaceTime engineers say that because I did an ESN Swap, I need to do a restore as a new device. Yay. I'll report back how that works.
 
E

Eric8199

macrumors 6502a
Feb 27, 2009
800
187
My wife was on an Alltel plan and FaceTime didn't work. Tonight we switched to a Verizon family plan and suddenly it's working. My Mom is on an old Alltel plan, and hers isn't working. Bet most of you with problems are on old Alltel plans.
 
T

tomrinny

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 7, 2007
43
0
Eric8199 said:
My wife was on an Alltel plan and FaceTime didn't work. Tonight we switched to a Verizon family plan and suddenly it's working. My Mom is on an old Alltel plan, and hers isn't working. Bet most of you with problems are on old Alltel plans.
Click to expand...

Except for the part where we said we were never with alltel
 
K

kardiackeith

macrumors member
Jan 18, 2011
98
0
tomrinny said:
Except for the part where we said we were never with alltel
Click to expand...

This is on the verge of being a widespread issue. Do you have Verizon in the top left corner of the phone?

I spoke with Verizon for the third time this evening, and he told me that this has been the largest issue with the phone thus far, and Verizon is working on a fix. He said it's been the most common in former Alltel customers, but they were not the only ones with the issue.

Just be patient. I'm 100% sure that Verizon is trying to fix this before it becomes a mass problem in 5 hours. They obviously don't want bad press when launching their most popular phone to date.

For now, just use Skype. It works on 3g and wifi, and it might even be better than Facetime.

I may never even use FT, I just want a fully functional iPhone
 
D

DoctorK4

macrumors regular
Jan 31, 2011
142
3
The full restore as new device did not work. Back to AppleCare who conferenced me in with Verizon Tech Support. They basically took all features off my line and re-provisioned it from scratch. It is exactly the same as my wife's whose FaceTime works fine. Then I did ANOTHER restore as new phone, another *228, but nothing worked. Throw in a bunch of reset all, reset network settings, etc.

It's the opinion of the AppleCare guy that it's something in the FaceTime database that is hung up on my old phone number. He sent them a message late last night (about 9pm EST) and we hope to hear back Thursday.

Because I was able to FaceTime before the ESN swap, we're all pretty confident that it's not an issue with my phone.
 
E

Eric8199

macrumors 6502a
Feb 27, 2009
800
187
tomrinny said:
Except for the part where we said we were never with alltel
Click to expand...

You obviously missed the part where I said MOST of the people with the problem are probably on old Alltel plans. It's ok, your smart Alec comment was very helpful to this thread, like about 75 percent of the posts on MR from people who think they know everything.

Anyway, onto a post that is relevant, I did ask Verizon about it last night when I was on the phone with them for an hour and a half trying to get my voicemail to work, and they said it's a major problem, and they and Apple are aware of it. They said Apple is working on a patch for it, and it should be out by sometime next week.

So, if you are on an old alltel plan, call Verizon and change it, and that might solve your issue. Otherwise, wait for the update. With so many people having problems, they'll fix it.
 
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