No SIM - No plan on AW3

[370zulu]

I spent a good portion of my day yesterday dealing with AT&T and Apple to figure out why my 2 week old AW3 would not allow me to provision cellular. The watch shows "No SIM" and "No plan". We reset the watch at least 8 time and my iPhone 8+ twice in the process of troubleshooting. Several hours later AT&T store manager told me that they have seen this issue before and the person who had it happen to them found that Apple declared the watch defective. She told me that without the SIM (eSIM) showing, there is no way to provision cellular. She told me that AT&T has an agreement with Apple that ALL Apple devices that are sold that have a defect need to be sent back to Apple even if it is only 1 day old. I was not expecting this and it was pretty disappointing.

Turns out, my watch purchase was at 14 days old exactly. So, I elected to pay the restocking fee and return the watch and purchase a brand new one rather than send my watch to apple and wait for it to come back and have a mismatched box serial number.

Has anyone else had this happen with the "No SIM" issue?

 

[dave006]

Yes we have had reports since the initial release of the Series 3 LTE watches in September. The issue is that there are multiple eSIMs in the system in various states. The AT&T rep has to know how to clear all pending eSIM provisionings that did not actually download to the watch.

The watch is an odd device, the only other AT&T device that currently has an eSIM is the latest iPad Pro LTE models. This means that most AT&T reps don't have any experience with what to do when something goes wrong during the provisioning steps in the LTE setup on the watch.

Normally reps are used to having a physical SIM to work with that has an ICCID printed on the front. In the case of the LTE watch, the ICCID is generated during the activation steps and downloaded to the watch and stored in the eSIM.

While it is possible that there was a physical problem with your watch, I would vote that it was more likely than not a case of multiple activations stuck in the AT&T system.

The set up flow gets confused when multiple eSIMs exists that are in a Reserved, Partially Activated or Fully Activated status for the same EID. The watch has a physical EID assigned in addition to a traditional IMEI that is needed to "define" each unique watch to the carrier's network.

Dave

 

[370zulu]

Thanks for the explanation. After the first few hours with them on the phone, I knew there was some kind of knowledge that they did not have about this. When I activate my new watch on a new line of service, I would not expect to see this issue again. Do you believe that the activation issues are tied to the phone number assigned to the old device and number or are they attached to my AT&T account?

 

[dave006]

First let's cover the watch and the Electronic Identification Device (EID). The EID is a unique number assigned to each watch and is used in the generation of the eSIM. Using a new or different watch should easily get you past any hanging or pending eSIM in the AT&T systems.

Did you have issues doing a self-activation using just the watch and the iPhone Watch app? Do you have an older AT&T plan that might not have been supported by the self-activation? This could also be part of the problem with activating on your AT&T plan.

Give it another try with your new watch and let us know if it does not work by just doing the initial watch set up or the Set up Cellular steps after you initially pair your new watch. There are a number of steps that may be needed if you have an older AT&T plan that is not directly supported for the self-service activation steps.

Dave

 

[iltwtv]

I spent 2 1/2 hours on the phone Wednesday with AT&T Apple Watch tech support and an AppleCare rep and finally solved the problem. Not sure this is your issue, but it might help.

My Apple Watch arrived last week and I activated LTE with AT&T with no problem. My wife’s Apple Watch arrived Monday. I proceeded to set it up and signed into my AT&T account during the activation process. No luck. Got an email from AT&T saying it would take 24 hours to complete. Got a second email from AT&T cancelling my order.

Tuesday I called At&T Apple Watch tech support, and a very knowledgeable woman said my wife needed her own user ID and password to set up NumberSync for her cell phone number. Then she walked me through setting up a separate sign in, setting up NumberSync for her number, and unpairing her watch and repairing. At the very end, no luck. I was told I needed to go to an AT&T store.

Wednesday I went to the store. The person told me that my watch said no sim and that the error message he got was that the number was already in use. I returned home and called Apple. The tech advisor checked my phone and watch and said everything was OK. No sim is normal. Now here is where Apple support differentiated itself. Rather than tell me to call AT&T because it was their problem, she called AT&T Watch tech support with me on the line. She explained the problem. Now the AT&T tech support person knew what to do. Rather then just unpair the watch from the phone, she had me erase and reset all contents and settings on the watch. This was because the incorrect info was still stored on the watch from my attempt on Monday to set up the watch.

So I went through the set up and activation process with both Apple and AT&T on the line. When I got to the screen to sign into AT&T, I entered the user ID and password for my wife that was set up on Tuesday. The rest of the activation went without a hitch.

So the problem was not knowing that my wife (the second watch to be activated on our wireless account) needed a separate sign in to get NumberSync on her cell phone number and then trying to activate her watch without first erasing and resetting all contents.

 

[370zulu]

Thanks fof the info. We have already replaced the watch with a new one and it works perfectly.